Two North Carolina half-brothers who were imprisoned for the 1983 rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl saw their murder convictions overturned on Tuesday, finally brining justice for the men who claimed their confessions were coerced, The New York Times reported.
A superior court judge ordered that 50-year-old Henry McCollum and 46-year-old Leon Brown- who are both mentally disabled- be released after serving 30 years in prison. Their lawyers filed a motion for their release after DNA recovered from the Robeson County crime scene implicated another man currently serving a life sentence for raping and murdering another woman.
"We waited all these long years for this," James McCollum, Henry's father, said according to The NY Times. "Thank you, Jesus."
Brown was sentenced to life in prison while McCollum was placed on death row following their conviction for raping and suffocating Sabrina Buie, whose body was found in a rural soybean field. She was naked except for a bra shoved against her neck, the Associated Press reported.
A cigarette butt and a beer can were recovered at the crime scene, neither of which contained the brothers' fingerprints. Still Brown and McCollum were interrogated by officers investigating Buie's murder in September 1983.
After five hours of questioning, then 19-year-old McCollum confessed.
"I had never been under this much pressure, with a person hollering at me and threatening me," McCollum, who one judge said had the mental age of a 9-year-old, told The News & Observer. "I just made up a story and gave it to them so they would let me go home."
His brother, also said to have a low IQ, later confessed after investigators told him his brother did the same and suggested Brown would be executed if he did not cooperate, according to The NY Times. Brown was 15 at the time. Both men recanted their confessions at their trials.
DNA evidence collected from the cigarette butt pointed to a man named Roscoe Artis, who lived a block away from where Buie's body was found. Artis remains in prison for murdering an 18-year-old girl.
Investigators have not yet explained why they kept the investigation focused on the brothers even after they said they were innocent, The NY Times reported.
McCollum and Brown are expected to be released Wednesday.
