His half-bother, who was serving a life sentence, was also freed after both were convicted in the 1983 rape-murder of an 11-year-old girl
Here is a case that should give those of us who have been complaining about endless death row appeals – and that certainly includes me – some second thoughts.
Henry McCollum, 50, and his half-brother Leon Brown, 46, were convicted of the rape and murder of 11-year-old Sabrina Buie after her body was found in a field in the town of Red Springs, North Carolina. McCollum was 19 at the time and Brown was 15.
Both brothers were intellectually challenged and both were barely able to read and write. After a lengthy interrogation, the police wrote out a detailed confession for the brothers which they both signed. They claimed they signed the confession only because the police promised to release them if they signed.
DNA testing absolved both brothers of the crime. DNA testing of a cigarette butt found by the victim’s body linked Roscoe Artis, now 74, to the rape-murder. A month after Sabrina Buie’s body was found, Artis was convicted of raping and murdering an 18-year-old girl. He was also sentenced to death, but the sentence was later changed to life in prison. He had a long history of assaulting women.
On Tuesday a judge declared the brothers innocent and ordered their release from prison. McCollum has been North Carolina's longest-serving death row inmate. His brother, who had also been sentenced to death,gh had a second trial in which the charges were reduced to rape and for which he received a life sentence.
All three, McCollum, Brown and Buie, were black. Had the victim been white, the brothers would probably have been lynched by the good and God fearing white folks in Red Springs. This is one of those cases for which we can be thankful that those appeals went on and on and on.
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