Two half brothers were awarded $75 million by a jury after being wrongfully convicted of the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in 1983.
Henry McCollum and Leon Brown spent 31 years in prison.
The eight-person jury in Raleigh, North Carolina, decided Henry McCollum and Leon Brown should received $31 million each in compensatory damages, $1 million for every year spent in prison, The News & Observer reported. The jury also awarded them $13 million in punitive damages.
“The first jury to hear all of the evidence — including the wrongly suppressed evidence — found Henry and Leon to be innocent, found them to have been demonstrably and excruciatingly wronged, and has done what the law can do to make it right at this late date,” Raleigh attorney Elliot Abrams said after the trial.
