A federal jury has awarded $75 million to two men who were wrongfully convicted and spent nearly 31 years on death row.    Brothers Henry McCollum and Leon Brown were convicted in 1984 and sentenced to death for the murder and rape of an 11-year-old girl. But in 2014 DNA evidence finally set them free, and in 2015, ...

Tagged with: Death Row

RALEIGH (AP) — A jury in a North Carolina federal civil rights case has awarded $75 million to two Black, intellectually disabled half brothers who spent decades behind bars after being wrongfully convicted in the 1983 rape and murder of ...

Tagged with: Death Row

RALEIGH (AP) — The North Carolina Supreme Court decided Friday to allow a new trial for a death row inmate convicted of robbing and murdering an elderly couple in their Whiteville, North Carolina, home in 1991. Leslie Baldwin and his ...

Tagged with: Death Row

By BRYAN ANDERSON Associated Press/Report for America RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled on Friday that three death row inmates will have their sentences reduced to life in prison through the state’s now-defunct Racial Justice Act. ...

Tagged with: Death Row

Porter v. Clarke (Lawyers Weekly No. 001-076-17, 16 pp.) (Wynn, J.) No. 16-7044, March 24, 2017; USDC at Alexandria, Va. (Brinkema, J.) 4th Cir. Holding: Although defendant prison officials have substantially changed policies governing conditions of confinement for Virginia death-row ...

Tagged with: Death Row

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Authorities say a 58-year-old inmate on North Carolina’s death row for killing a woman he lured through a Craigslist ad has died of natural causes. Department of Public Safety spokesman Keith Acree said in a statement ...

Tagged with: Death Row Iredell County

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A federal appeals court has rejected a North Carolina death row inmate’s appeal. A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond unanimously ruled Tuesday that Errol Moses waited too long to ...

Tagged with: Death Row

Prieto v. Clarke, Director (Lawyers Weekly No. 15-01-0227, 35 pp.) (Motz, J.) No. 13-8021, March 10, 2015; USDC at Alexandria, Va. (Brinkema, J.) 4th Cir. Holding: The 4th Circuit reverses a district court decision and says that Virginia’s policy of ...

Tagged with: Death Row solitary confinement

RALEIGH — After walking out of prison for the first time in three decades, former death row inmate Henry McCollum tried to climb into his father’s car but put his head through the loop of the seatbelt that is supposed ...

Tagged with: Death Penalty Death Row dna evidence

RALEIGH (AP) — One of North Carolina’s longest-serving death row inmates was freed from prison Wednesday, a day after a judge overturned his conviction because of new DNA evidence in the case. Henry McCollum, 50, walked out of Central Prison ...

Tagged with: Death Row