Hogan Lovells Helps Falsely Sentenced Men Win $75M By
Sameer Rao | June 6, 2021, 8:02 PM EDT
Leon Brown, left, greets his half-brother Henry McCollum, in the blue shirt, soon after a judge exonerated them in 2014 for the 1983 rape and murder of 11-year-old Sabrina Buie in Red Springs, North Carolina. (Chuck Liddy/Raleigh News & Observer/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
On May 14, after decades of incarceration for violent crimes they did not commit, half-brothers Henry McCollum and Leon Brown received some welcome news: An eight-member jury in Raleigh, North Carolina s federal district court had awarded them $75 million. granted both men $1 million in compensatory damages for each of their 31 years behind bars. It also ordered punitive damages worth $13 million from the two former State Bureau of Investigation agents that the jury found violated the men s civil rights during the 1983 interrogations that led to the half-brothers being convicted of raping and mur