October 12, 2020 • 31 mins
I shall no longer tinker with the machinery of death.
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin bring us inside a decades-long fight for the truth. The story of Henry McCollum and Leon Brown is living proof that false confessions can send innocent people to death row.
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1.
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This episode includes audio from “Brothers Return Home to Freedom” from The News & Observer. © 2014 McClatchy. All rights reserved. Used under license.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer,
and I'm Steve Drisan. In today's episode, the crime is
bad about as bad as it gets. But the way
police and prosecutors mishandled this case and condemned two innocent
men to death, that's a crime unto itself. Henry McCollum
and his younger brother, Leon Brown survived a decades long
(00:24):
fight for the truth from behind bars. Henry and Leon
are living proof that false confessions can send innocent people
to death row. Twenty years ago, the Center on Wrongful Convictions,
(00:45):
which Laura and I co direct, was deeply involved in
exonerating men off of death row in Illinois. The numbers
kept kicking up. It went up to twenty people who
had been wrongfully sentenced to death, twenty innocent people. Eventually,
Illinois lost confidence of the people on death row were
(01:05):
actually guilty, and so we got rid of the death penalty.
When the death penalty was abolished in Illinois ten years ago,
there were some prosecutors who claimed that the sky would fall,
that crime rates would rise, that the system would miss
the ability and the power to use the death penalty
(01:29):
to right wrongs, and that hasn't happened. We've moved on,
we've evolved, and it's time for the rest of the
country to follow suit. Here's the thing. The death penalty
is supposed to be reserved for the worst of the worst,
but way too often those are the cases where wrongful
convictions happen. These are the crimes where there's so much
(01:49):
pressure on law enforcement to come up with quick answers
that there are rushes to judgment. Right. That's the problem
with the death penalty. People can get so blinded with
the horrific nous of a crime that moral outrage can
distort the search for the truth. And that's what happened
in this case. Henry McCollum and his brother Leon Brown
(02:10):
paid a terrible price for the police's rush to judgment.
The facts of the crime often don't tell the whole story,
and sometimes tell a false story. So while on paper
this case looks like one that is deserving of the
(02:31):
ultimate punishment, in practice, it's sent two innocent men to
prison for more than thirty years. Today's story starts in
Robinson County, North Carolina. It's a rural area on the
state southern border. Eighty miles inland from the Atlantic coast.
(02:51):
Since the eighteenth century, Robinson County has been known for
social strata and rachel strife. It's a place where a
small group of elite white men descended from colonial landowners,
dominate everything from the lumber business to the illegal drug
trade to the courtrooms. Meanwhile Native Americans, poor whites, and
black people get the scraps. On September, Ronnie Lee Bowie
(03:16):
came home to his tiny house in one of Robinson
County's predominantly black communities. It was a little after twelve am.
He just finished working the midnight shift. Within minutes, he
noticed that his eleven year old daughter, Sabrina, was missing
from her room. Sabrina's family calls the police. As the
sun rises and words spreads, Friends and neighbors fan out
(03:37):
to search for her, but there's no sign of Sabrina
until the next afternoon September. That's when Sabrina buy is found,
and it's one of the worst discoveries imaginable. Sabrina is
lying in a soybean field, dead, surrounded by empty beer
cans and cigarette butts. She's been beaten and raped. She
(03:57):
isn't wearing anything except for a bra that's been pushed
up around her neck, and her cause of death. Sabrina
had been suffocated by her own underwear. Someone had pushed
them into her throat with a stick. You know, when
I read about this crime, it just gutted me. My
reaction was visceral. There's a level of depravity here that
(04:17):
shocks the conscience. Police couldn't bring themselves to believe that
someone from their own community would have done this, so
they started investigating outsiders. Pretty soon, police caught wind of
a rumor about a nineteen year old who just arrived
in Robinson County to visit his mom. The local high
schoolers thought this new kid might have killed Sabrina because,
(04:38):
according to them, he looked weird. That new kid's name
was Henry McCollum. Even though his mom lived in Robinson County,
Henry had grown up in New Jersey with his grandma.
Henry had been diagnosed with intellectual disability when he was
really young. For years, he attended a special school, but
he failed a bunch of grades anyway and eventually dropped out.
(04:59):
School wasn't Henry's strong suit, but obedience to authority was.
He'd never been associated with any kind of crime with
nothing more to go on than a high school rumor.
Police go to Henry's mom's house, and on the evening
of September they bring Henry in for interrogation. Three police
(05:20):
officers questioned him for more than four hours, all off camera.
So we don't know everything that happened in that room.
What we do know is that some of Henry's interrogators
were familiar with the crime scene. They knew all the
information that a killer would be expected to describe. Sometime
around two i am, the interrogators emerged from the room
(05:41):
with a confession that named Henry as one of Sabrina's assailants.
It had been written out by the cops. Henry had
signed it at the end in oversized letters that looked
like a child's handwriting. According to Henry, as soon as
he wrote his name on the last page, he looked
up at his interrogators and said, can I go home now?
I think Henry is a very kind person. He's a
(06:04):
very thoughtful person. That's Representative Yanetta Aliston. She's a member
of the North Carolina State Legislature, but before that she
was a death penalty lawyer who worked on Henry's case.
From the first time I met Henry in it's my
impression that his deficits were very obvious. I think anyone
talking to him now, or five years ago or thirty
(06:25):
years ago would have noticed, and so as a result
of his deficits, he signed the statement. Now, I think
most folks in that circumstance would understand that if they
signed a confession to murder, that they wouldn't be allowed
to walk out the front door of a police station.
But the statement used the language that Henry was very
unlikely to have understood, and so he didn't know what
(06:47):
was happening at all. While Henry's confession was light on details,
it's story tracked exactly what an investigator who had been
at the scene would know, everything from the pattern on
Sabrina's shirt to the brand of cigarettes left behind. Here's
the thing, Henry could not lead the police to any
evidence that they didn't already know about. His confession only
(07:10):
contained details that the police already knew. That's a red flag.
You have to wonder is this the suspect's confession or
a confession that was scripted by law enforcement to ensure
that this suspect was going to get convicted. Henry's confession
didn't just implicate him. The story was that he'd attacked
(07:32):
Sabrina along with four other teenagers. Now, three of those
teams turned out to have strong alibis. One of them
had even been out of state at the time of
Sabrina's death. Prosecutors never filed charges against those three, But
the fourth person named it was Leon Brown, Henry McCollums
fifteen year old brother. And while Henry was disabled, Leon's
(07:54):
limitations were far more profound. His i Q was in
the forties, on the border line between moderately and severely disabled,
and he was completely illiterate. Both of these men, who
were at that time boys, their intellectual disabilities were exploited.
Folks who have cognitive deficits that make it difficult or
(08:14):
complicated for them to make everyday decisions to get dressed,
to loan a schedule, to make food for themselves, to
drive cars, to learn in school at a level that's
consistent with their age. Folks who are unable to do
those things. We shouldn't be holding them to the same
standard in our criminal justice system, and certainly not in
(08:35):
our death penalty system. When Henry implicated Leon in his confession.
It turned out the timing was pretty bad. While Henry
was being questioned, the boy's mom arrived at the police
station begging to see Henry. Police told her she'd have
to wait until he confessed. But here's the thing. Henry's
mom brought Leon with her to the station. He was
almost surely too disabled to be left home alone. So
(08:58):
after Henry confessed and the police came looking for Leon,
they didn't have to go any farther than their own lobby.
Police put Leon into an interrogation room, then merched his
big brethren to show him what to do. Within minutes,
Leon was signing a written out confession of his own,
scratching his name as best he could on the bottom
(09:18):
of a statement he couldn't even read. Based on their confessions,
the two brothers were arrested and charged with rape and
capital murder. This episode is sponsored by a i G,
a leading global insurance company, and Paul Weiss, Rifkin, Warton
(09:40):
and Garrison, a leading international law firm. The A i
G Pro Bono program provides free legal services and other
support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals most in need,
and recently they announced that working to reform the criminal
justice system will become a key pillar of the program's mission.
Paul Weiss has law had an unwavering commitment to providing impactful,
(10:03):
pro bono legal assistance to the most vulnerable members of
our society and in support of the public interest, including
extensive or in the criminal justice area. The question of
who killed Sabrina Booie gripped Robinson County. The crime was
(10:24):
terrible and the community wanted justice, so the county's top
prosecutor took over the case. The district attorney himself, Joe
Freeman Britt, was six ft six a seasoned trial lawyer
known for a dramatic courtroom flourishes like pounding bibles in
front of the jury. But he was more than just
a flashy attorney. By the time Henry and Leon's cases
(10:46):
crossed his desk, Joe Freeman Britt had become infamous nationwide
for his success at obtaining the death penalty. Over his career,
Britt sent more than forty seven people to death. At
one point, he obtained two dozen death sentences in only
twenty eight months. Britt was so prolific that he even
(11:07):
ended up in the Guinness Book of World records, which
called him the deadliest prosecutor. Some prosecutors believe deeply in
the eye for an eye mentality. For some, it's almost
a biblical calling, like religious fervor that animates them. Forty
seven people. I mean, if he weren't a prosecutor, he'd
(11:29):
be one of the most prolific serial killers in the
United States people. That's unthinkable. It seems like Britt leaned
into his hardass reputation. He'd run training conferences for other
prosecutors where he taught them to quote rip that jugular
out when he felt like waxing poetic. Britt would say,
within each of us burns a flame that constantly whispers,
(11:51):
preserve life at any cost. It's the prosecutor's job, he
would add to extinguish that flame. I think that that
sums up he was as a person and as a
district attorney. Joe Freeman, Britt was frankly a terror. He
was a large, commanding presence, and I think really leaned
(12:11):
into that persona. I know that he was very from
what I've read, he was very much into the theater
of a courtroom and really played into that to secure convictions.
Joe Freeman Britt was in full form, gearing up to
try Henry and Leon for Sabrina's murder and seeking the
death penalty for them both. But before trial, two major
(12:33):
problems emerged with Britt's case against the brothers. First of all,
Henry and Leon's confessions didn't match each other on several
important details, who was involved, how they met up with Sabrina,
and the details of the rape and murder. And of
course there was the matter of the three other boys
named in Henry's confession, all of whom were definitely innocent.
(12:54):
Leon or Henry. There was nothing other than their words
that linked them to this crime, you know. And Henry
and Leon were not the kinds of people that would
have committed a perfect crime. Even the way in which
the confessions were written didn't ring true. In his statement
used language that Henry, you know, it was very unlikely
(13:16):
to have understood. And I think that's a product of
his age and most certainly a product of his intellectual disabilities.
And Leon's is similar. If you look at Leon's statement,
it's written in penmanship that Leon was incapable of because
of his deficits, And again use language and detail and
just sentence structure, that Leon would have been incapable of
creating the second problem. There was a pretty obvious alternative suspect,
(13:39):
a man named Roscoe Artists. Artists lived near the field
where Sabrina's body was found, and he had a disturbing history.
Only a few weeks after Henry and Leon were arrested,
Roscoe Artists had murdered an eighteen year old girl in
an attack eaerily similar to the attack on Sabrina. Both
victims were raped and asphyxiated. Both of them were also
(14:00):
found in fields wearing nothing but bras pushed up around
their necks. It gets worse. Roscoe Artist was also a
suspect in another rape murder case from In that case,
the victim was found with an object shoved in her throat,
another similarity that should have been impossible to miss. Henry
McCullum and Leon Brown did not have the kind of
(14:23):
background that suggested they were capable of the horrific nature
of this crime. This was the work of a sexual predator,
probably a single sexual predator. Because of the way the
crime scene presented itself. This is not some huge community
(14:45):
that is beset by violent crime, and the first thing
that police officers should have done. Is focused on men
in their own community who had a proclivity for committing
these kinds of crimes. W Scool Artists showed a history
of doing this over and over again, and his home
(15:06):
was very close to where the body was found. Now
here's the really crazy thing about Roscoe Artists. One month
before Henry and Leon went to trial, Artists was tried
and convicted for the attack on the eighteen year old girl.
He was sentenced to death. And that fact almost gives
away the punchline, because sure enough, Roscoe Artists was prosecuted
(15:26):
by Joe Freeman Britt himself for a crime nearly identical
to the one Britt was prosecuting Henry and Leon. For
the similarities between Artists other murders and Sabrina's death should
have been unmistakable. Those are warning signs, stop lights to say, hey,
wait a minute, let's see what really happened here, Let's
(15:47):
look at people who more fit the profile. Well, Roscoe
Artists was no stranger to law enforcement. That's what's so
mind boggling about this case. It was all they're ready
to be done right, and it has done so wrong,
so wrong, This horrible, tragic nightmare could have been averted
from the very get go, and the woman who Rascoe
(16:09):
Artists killed less than a month after Sabrina Booie was killed,
her life might have been saved. Not everyone overlooked the
similarities between these murders. We know this because of what
happened with a piece of forensic evidence in the case,
a single unidentified fingerprint found on one of the beer
cans near Sabrina's body. Three days before Henry and Leon's
(16:31):
trial started. The police sent a request to the state
crime Lab to compare that beer can fingerprint to the
fingerprints of Roscoe Artists. But Joe Freeman Britt, even before
the crime lab had time to do the testing, Britt
charged ahead with Henry and Leon's trial, and that trial
(16:51):
was hardly a fair fight. You've got the deadliest d
a facing off against two disabled teenagers never stood a chance.
It's it's going to be their word against the word
of the police when this case goes to trial. How's
somebody with a fifty six i Q or i Q
supposed to try to match their wits with prosecutor like
(17:14):
Joe Freeman Britt. The heartbreaker was when Henry McCollum took
the stand in his own defense with his typical flare.
Joe Freeman Britt handled that cross examination himself. Didn't that
touch your soul at all? Britt asked, when that little
girl was down on the ground hollering, it didn't touch
my soul. Henry answered, because I didn't kill nobody. He added,
(17:37):
I want to tell you something, Joe Freeman, God got
your judgment right in hell waiting for you. It wasn't enough.
The jury convicted both Henry and Leon based on the confessions.
After the verdicts came back that fingerprint testing appears to
have been canceled. Jefrem Brett was much more concerned and
(17:59):
laser focus on pursuing the death penalty against Henry McCollum
and Leon Brown that he was in finding the real killer.
They failed to pursue a fingerprint examination that I tend
to think would have been very much determinative in this case,
and I have to imagine that Joe Freeman Britt was
part of that decision making process. The defense was never
(18:21):
even told that police had requested fingerprint testing. Instead, that
information remained hidden, and Henry and Leon were sent to
North Carolina's death row. Right alongside Roscoe artists. A few
years later, in a court overturned Henry and Leon's convictions,
but Britt retried them both separately. At Leon's second trial,
(18:44):
the judge dismissed the murder charges against him, so Leon
was convicted only of rape and sentenced to life in prison,
not death. But Henry still faced murder charges and he
was soon convicted again. His attorneys hoped that at least
they might be able to save his life this time,
but they were wrong. When Henrys sentence was read, he
(19:04):
sat silently with his head down on the table like
a scared child. He had to go back to death row.
The case of Sabrina Booie's murder was closed, but not forgotten.
(19:26):
That disabled kid who became a murder suspect because some
high school or thought he looked weird was soon being
singled out by a justice on the United States Supreme Court.
But Henry McCollum's case was getting attention for all the
wrong reasons. It was, and the Supreme Court was debating
whether the United States should still have the death penalty.
(19:46):
In a case from Texas, one Justice Harry Blackman wrote
that the death penalty should be ruled unconstitutional. Justice Blackman
described how lethal injection works, how one human being injects
draw into another human's body in front of an audience,
until the condemned person dies in front of them. The
Justice wrote about his experience of trying for twenty years
(20:10):
to develop rules that would ensure a perfect death penalty process.
After nearly two decades, he declared the task impossible. No
set of rules would be able to guarantee that we
only execute the guilty, and only after the guilty receive
a fair process. From this day forward, Justice Blackman wrote,
I shall no longer tinker with the machinery of death.
(20:34):
Justice Anton and Scalia wrote a scathing rebuttal, and this
is where Henry and his brother Leon come in. Lethal injection.
Justice Scalia wrote, looks pretty desirable compared to some of
the worst murder cases. He urged readers to consider the
case of the eleven year old girl killed by stuffing
her panties down our throat. How enviable a quiet death
(20:56):
by lethal injection compared with that. Justice Leah was talking
about the case of Sabrina Buoy. Justice Scalia said, if
there's every case that warranted the death penalty, it's this one.
Knowing what we know now about Henry Leon's innocence, I
think it completely undermines in a legal or moral argument
behind that statement, because if this case could be held
(21:19):
up as the poster case for the death penalty, and
now we've discovered what an absolute mess of negligence and
railroading it involved, then that means the entire system is undermined.
The years ticked by and that railroading started coming to
light as the record of Joe Freeman Britt started getting
some scrutiny. According to a report by Harvard Law School's
(21:42):
Fair Punishment Project, Britt committed misconduct in fourteen cases. In
Henry McCollum's case, the report said he failed to notify
the defense not only about the beer can fingerprints, but
also about a cigarette butt found near Sabrina's body. In
two thousand five, more than twenty years after Sabrina died,
(22:03):
Henry's post conviction lawyers asked for DNA testing on the
traces of saliva left on the cigarette butt. That testing
found a single male profile, and it didn't belong to
Henry or Leon. That evidence should have been enough to
exonerate them right then and there. The testing wasn't sophisticated
enough at that point to match it to someone else. Basically,
(22:24):
we knew that it wasn't Henry's. We knew that it
wasn't Leon's, but that's all that we knew. The profile
couldn't be run through the national DNA database, and so
Henry and Leon were denied exoneration because their lawyers couldn't
tell the state whose DNA it really was. It took
nearly nine years for the case to regain momentum. With
(22:45):
the help of another inmate, Leon wrote to the North
Carolina innocenc in Quirky Commission and asked them to look
into his case. The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission is
an independent state agency charged with investigating claims of actual innocence.
(23:06):
But the Commission doesn't have an agenda. It's not here
to prove that the defendants did not commit this crime.
It's here to find the truth, and it's the only
statewide agency like it in the country. They commission could say,
we want to test this evidence, we want access to
these records, we want access to these boxes of evidence
(23:27):
that has been sitting on your shelf for thirty years.
Hand them over to us. Right now, so as an
extraordinary power to have. There was no stone left unturned.
They tested every hair, They tested rappers found at the
crime scene. They tested beer cans. They tested all of
her clothing, her blouse, her shoes, her socks, her underpants.
(23:50):
They tested cigarette butts. This time, with more sophisticated testing,
the cigarette butt DNA was able to be identified. It
wasn't Henry's, it wasn't Leon's. When they ran it through
the North Carolina database, they got a hit. They got
a hit to Roscoe artists. We knew of Roscoe artists,
(24:10):
we knew how eerily similar their crimes were Roscoe artists
who was living in the very same community, and a
month later committed a very similar crime. That was enough.
Henry and Leon's lawyers, including Representative Alston, asked the court
to throw out their convictions based on DNA evidence of
(24:31):
the real killer, and on September two, two thousand fourteen,
Henry McCollum and Leon Brown were exonerated in a Robinson
County courtroom as the burden of wrongful conviction was lifted
from him. Leon Brown smiled big, but all Henry McCollum
could do was sit back in his chair, take a
(24:51):
deep breath, and close his eyes. Both men had served
nearly thirty one years in prison. Now fine, they were
going home. No, what's my name's right? That's rights to
(25:22):
make a doubly official. Both Henry and Leon received pardons
from the North Carolina Governor in June two thousand fifteen.
Joe Freeman Britt remained a firm believer in their guilt.
When he heard about the pardons, Britt called the governor
a damn fool. Today, Rosco Artiss remains behind bars in
North Carolina. On appeal, his death sentence was converted to
(25:43):
life in prison. For his part. Joe Freeman Britt died
in two thousand sixteen. So here's the thing. During the
thirty one years that Henry spent on death row, he
went through two capital trials. Twenty four jurors evaluated the
evidence against him, and they all voted to convict. Over
(26:05):
the years, more than twenty judges reviewed the case against
him and said they found nothing wrong. Twelve defense attorneys
represented him over the years. They all did their jobs
just as the system expects them to. If it weren't
for the Innocence Inquiry Commission, Henry would probably be dead today,
executed by lethal injection. But North Carolina is the only
(26:27):
state with a commission like that, even though twenty seven
other states have the death penalty, and the commission can
only take a tiny fraction of the cases that are
brought to it. So I have to agree with Supreme
Court Justice Blackman. We can have the best process in
the world, but there is no such thing as a
perfect death penalty. They're going to be errors in the
(26:48):
fact that in some parts of a state the death
penalty is sought more frequently than in other parts of
the state. They're going to be errors in the kinds
of cases, whether they're high publicity cases or not, or
in the race of the victim. They're going to be
disparities in the way these decisions are made. It's a
human endeavor, so there are going to be errors. Henry
(27:14):
McCollums not alone. To date, one hundred and seventy two
people have been exonerated off death rows nationwide, including at
least nine in North Carolina. Have we saved every innocent
person sentenced to death? There's no way we haven't executed
an innocent person, and it'll happen again until we abolish
(27:35):
the death penalty for good. You know, someone hadn't written
a letter on Leon's behalf to the Innasis and Career Commission,
we would not be here having this conversation. Henry and
Leon would not have been released. And our criminal justice system,
and our death penalty system in particular shouldn't and can't,
rely on luck to protect innocent people. Thanks to luck, perseverance,
(27:57):
and good lawyering, Henry and Leon are survived Earth. Instead
of living on death row, they can finally just live.
I try to stay busy every day. That's Henry, my
future wife. You know, she makes my days. She sweets
when I get up in the morning, like Robert Clark
(28:18):
in the morning. You know. I make her coffee, which
she drinks the cafe. I drink mine's black with no shig.
But it's a lot of food that I enjoy eating.
I like turn up greens, call up greens, and I said,
my lady is the best one knew how to fix
that baked chicken. For me. It feels good to breathe
(28:41):
this air out here. It's good to have my freedom again.
And here's Leon. My favorite thing to do is really
all listen to the radio, Old easy R and b
classes and seventies and eighties and nineties. Some of those
who storms stones that they don't make momot here the group.
(29:06):
You know. I try to treat everybody the way I
would want to be treated. I guess that's why they
lightening the way they do. They keep me going, keep
me laughing, and you know, might be here for you
know it the way the day be going. Man, it's
always something to do. This episode is dedicated to Henry
(29:35):
and Leon and to all the brave lawyers fighting to
abolish the death penalty. Steve and I salute you. That's
the story of Henry McCollum and Leon Brown. Join us
next week when we tell you about Tyra Patterson. Tyra
was just nineteen when she falsely confessed to stealing a necklace,
(29:55):
but because of an arcane legal rule, that confession to
stealing was to into a conviction for murder. Wrongful conviction.
False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
in association with Signal Company Number one Special thanks to
our executive producers Jason Slam and Kevin Wardis. Our production
(30:18):
team is headed by Senior producer and Pope, along with
producers Josh Hammer, and Jess Shane. Our show is mixed
by Genie Montalvo. John Colbert is our intrepid intern. Our
music was composed by j Ralph. You can follow me
on Instagram or Twitter at Laura and II Writer, and
you can follow me on Twitter at s driven. For
(30:38):
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Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
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wrong Conviction
Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer,
and I'm Steve Drisan. In today's episode, the crime is
bad about as bad as it gets. But the way
police and prosecutors mishandled this case and condemned two innocent
men to death, that's a crime unto itself. Henry McCollum
and his younger brother, Leon Brown survived a decades long
(00:24):
fight for the truth from behind bars. Henry and Leon
are living proof that false confessions can send innocent people
to death row. Twenty years ago, the Center on Wrongful Convictions,
(00:45):
which Laura and I co direct, was deeply involved in
exonerating men off of death row in Illinois. The numbers
kept kicking up. It went up to twenty people who
had been wrongfully sentenced to death, twenty innocent people. Eventually,
Illinois lost confidence of the people on death row were
(01:05):
actually guilty, and so we got rid of the death penalty.
When the death penalty was abolished in Illinois ten years ago,
there were some prosecutors who claimed that the sky would fall,
that crime rates would rise, that the system would miss
the ability and the power to use the death penalty
(01:29):
to right wrongs, and that hasn't happened. We've moved on,
we've evolved, and it's time for the rest of the
country to follow suit. Here's the thing. The death penalty
is supposed to be reserved for the worst of the worst,
but way too often those are the cases where wrongful
convictions happen. These are the crimes where there's so much
(01:49):
pressure on law enforcement to come up with quick answers
that there are rushes to judgment. Right. That's the problem
with the death penalty. People can get so blinded with
the horrific nous of a crime that moral outrage can
distort the search for the truth. And that's what happened
in this case. Henry McCollum and his brother Leon Brown
(02:10):
paid a terrible price for the police's rush to judgment.
The facts of the crime often don't tell the whole story,
and sometimes tell a false story. So while on paper
this case looks like one that is deserving of the
(02:31):
ultimate punishment, in practice, it's sent two innocent men to
prison for more than thirty years. Today's story starts in
Robinson County, North Carolina. It's a rural area on the
state southern border. Eighty miles inland from the Atlantic coast.
(02:51):
Since the eighteenth century, Robinson County has been known for
social strata and rachel strife. It's a place where a
small group of elite white men descended from colonial landowners,
dominate everything from the lumber business to the illegal drug
trade to the courtrooms. Meanwhile Native Americans, poor whites, and
black people get the scraps. On September, Ronnie Lee Bowie
(03:16):
came home to his tiny house in one of Robinson
County's predominantly black communities. It was a little after twelve am.
He just finished working the midnight shift. Within minutes, he
noticed that his eleven year old daughter, Sabrina, was missing
from her room. Sabrina's family calls the police. As the
sun rises and words spreads, Friends and neighbors fan out
(03:37):
to search for her, but there's no sign of Sabrina
until the next afternoon September. That's when Sabrina buy is found,
and it's one of the worst discoveries imaginable. Sabrina is
lying in a soybean field, dead, surrounded by empty beer
cans and cigarette butts. She's been beaten and raped. She
(03:57):
isn't wearing anything except for a bra that's been pushed
up around her neck, and her cause of death. Sabrina
had been suffocated by her own underwear. Someone had pushed
them into her throat with a stick. You know, when
I read about this crime, it just gutted me. My
reaction was visceral. There's a level of depravity here that
(04:17):
shocks the conscience. Police couldn't bring themselves to believe that
someone from their own community would have done this, so
they started investigating outsiders. Pretty soon, police caught wind of
a rumor about a nineteen year old who just arrived
in Robinson County to visit his mom. The local high
schoolers thought this new kid might have killed Sabrina because,
(04:38):
according to them, he looked weird. That new kid's name
was Henry McCollum. Even though his mom lived in Robinson County,
Henry had grown up in New Jersey with his grandma.
Henry had been diagnosed with intellectual disability when he was
really young. For years, he attended a special school, but
he failed a bunch of grades anyway and eventually dropped out.
(04:59):
School wasn't Henry's strong suit, but obedience to authority was.
He'd never been associated with any kind of crime with
nothing more to go on than a high school rumor.
Police go to Henry's mom's house, and on the evening
of September they bring Henry in for interrogation. Three police
(05:20):
officers questioned him for more than four hours, all off camera.
So we don't know everything that happened in that room.
What we do know is that some of Henry's interrogators
were familiar with the crime scene. They knew all the
information that a killer would be expected to describe. Sometime
around two i am, the interrogators emerged from the room
(05:41):
with a confession that named Henry as one of Sabrina's assailants.
It had been written out by the cops. Henry had
signed it at the end in oversized letters that looked
like a child's handwriting. According to Henry, as soon as
he wrote his name on the last page, he looked
up at his interrogators and said, can I go home now?
I think Henry is a very kind person. He's a
(06:04):
very thoughtful person. That's Representative Yanetta Aliston. She's a member
of the North Carolina State Legislature, but before that she
was a death penalty lawyer who worked on Henry's case.
From the first time I met Henry in it's my
impression that his deficits were very obvious. I think anyone
talking to him now, or five years ago or thirty
(06:25):
years ago would have noticed, and so as a result
of his deficits, he signed the statement. Now, I think
most folks in that circumstance would understand that if they
signed a confession to murder, that they wouldn't be allowed
to walk out the front door of a police station.
But the statement used the language that Henry was very
unlikely to have understood, and so he didn't know what
(06:47):
was happening at all. While Henry's confession was light on details,
it's story tracked exactly what an investigator who had been
at the scene would know, everything from the pattern on
Sabrina's shirt to the brand of cigarettes left behind. Here's
the thing, Henry could not lead the police to any
evidence that they didn't already know about. His confession only
(07:10):
contained details that the police already knew. That's a red flag.
You have to wonder is this the suspect's confession or
a confession that was scripted by law enforcement to ensure
that this suspect was going to get convicted. Henry's confession
didn't just implicate him. The story was that he'd attacked
(07:32):
Sabrina along with four other teenagers. Now, three of those
teams turned out to have strong alibis. One of them
had even been out of state at the time of
Sabrina's death. Prosecutors never filed charges against those three, But
the fourth person named it was Leon Brown, Henry McCollums
fifteen year old brother. And while Henry was disabled, Leon's
(07:54):
limitations were far more profound. His i Q was in
the forties, on the border line between moderately and severely disabled,
and he was completely illiterate. Both of these men, who
were at that time boys, their intellectual disabilities were exploited.
Folks who have cognitive deficits that make it difficult or
(08:14):
complicated for them to make everyday decisions to get dressed,
to loan a schedule, to make food for themselves, to
drive cars, to learn in school at a level that's
consistent with their age. Folks who are unable to do
those things. We shouldn't be holding them to the same
standard in our criminal justice system, and certainly not in
(08:35):
our death penalty system. When Henry implicated Leon in his confession.
It turned out the timing was pretty bad. While Henry
was being questioned, the boy's mom arrived at the police
station begging to see Henry. Police told her she'd have
to wait until he confessed. But here's the thing. Henry's
mom brought Leon with her to the station. He was
almost surely too disabled to be left home alone. So
(08:58):
after Henry confessed and the police came looking for Leon,
they didn't have to go any farther than their own lobby.
Police put Leon into an interrogation room, then merched his
big brethren to show him what to do. Within minutes,
Leon was signing a written out confession of his own,
scratching his name as best he could on the bottom
(09:18):
of a statement he couldn't even read. Based on their confessions,
the two brothers were arrested and charged with rape and
capital murder. This episode is sponsored by a i G,
a leading global insurance company, and Paul Weiss, Rifkin, Warton
(09:40):
and Garrison, a leading international law firm. The A i
G Pro Bono program provides free legal services and other
support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals most in need,
and recently they announced that working to reform the criminal
justice system will become a key pillar of the program's mission.
Paul Weiss has law had an unwavering commitment to providing impactful,
(10:03):
pro bono legal assistance to the most vulnerable members of
our society and in support of the public interest, including
extensive or in the criminal justice area. The question of
who killed Sabrina Booie gripped Robinson County. The crime was
(10:24):
terrible and the community wanted justice, so the county's top
prosecutor took over the case. The district attorney himself, Joe
Freeman Britt, was six ft six a seasoned trial lawyer
known for a dramatic courtroom flourishes like pounding bibles in
front of the jury. But he was more than just
a flashy attorney. By the time Henry and Leon's cases
(10:46):
crossed his desk, Joe Freeman Britt had become infamous nationwide
for his success at obtaining the death penalty. Over his career,
Britt sent more than forty seven people to death. At
one point, he obtained two dozen death sentences in only
twenty eight months. Britt was so prolific that he even
(11:07):
ended up in the Guinness Book of World records, which
called him the deadliest prosecutor. Some prosecutors believe deeply in
the eye for an eye mentality. For some, it's almost
a biblical calling, like religious fervor that animates them. Forty
seven people. I mean, if he weren't a prosecutor, he'd
(11:29):
be one of the most prolific serial killers in the
United States people. That's unthinkable. It seems like Britt leaned
into his hardass reputation. He'd run training conferences for other
prosecutors where he taught them to quote rip that jugular
out when he felt like waxing poetic. Britt would say,
within each of us burns a flame that constantly whispers,
(11:51):
preserve life at any cost. It's the prosecutor's job, he
would add to extinguish that flame. I think that that
sums up he was as a person and as a
district attorney. Joe Freeman, Britt was frankly a terror. He
was a large, commanding presence, and I think really leaned
(12:11):
into that persona. I know that he was very from
what I've read, he was very much into the theater
of a courtroom and really played into that to secure convictions.
Joe Freeman Britt was in full form, gearing up to
try Henry and Leon for Sabrina's murder and seeking the
death penalty for them both. But before trial, two major
(12:33):
problems emerged with Britt's case against the brothers. First of all,
Henry and Leon's confessions didn't match each other on several
important details, who was involved, how they met up with Sabrina,
and the details of the rape and murder. And of
course there was the matter of the three other boys
named in Henry's confession, all of whom were definitely innocent.
(12:54):
Leon or Henry. There was nothing other than their words
that linked them to this crime, you know. And Henry
and Leon were not the kinds of people that would
have committed a perfect crime. Even the way in which
the confessions were written didn't ring true. In his statement
used language that Henry, you know, it was very unlikely
(13:16):
to have understood. And I think that's a product of
his age and most certainly a product of his intellectual disabilities.
And Leon's is similar. If you look at Leon's statement,
it's written in penmanship that Leon was incapable of because
of his deficits, And again use language and detail and
just sentence structure, that Leon would have been incapable of
creating the second problem. There was a pretty obvious alternative suspect,
(13:39):
a man named Roscoe Artists. Artists lived near the field
where Sabrina's body was found, and he had a disturbing history.
Only a few weeks after Henry and Leon were arrested,
Roscoe Artists had murdered an eighteen year old girl in
an attack eaerily similar to the attack on Sabrina. Both
victims were raped and asphyxiated. Both of them were also
(14:00):
found in fields wearing nothing but bras pushed up around
their necks. It gets worse. Roscoe Artist was also a
suspect in another rape murder case from In that case,
the victim was found with an object shoved in her throat,
another similarity that should have been impossible to miss. Henry
McCullum and Leon Brown did not have the kind of
(14:23):
background that suggested they were capable of the horrific nature
of this crime. This was the work of a sexual predator,
probably a single sexual predator. Because of the way the
crime scene presented itself. This is not some huge community
(14:45):
that is beset by violent crime, and the first thing
that police officers should have done. Is focused on men
in their own community who had a proclivity for committing
these kinds of crimes. W Scool Artists showed a history
of doing this over and over again, and his home
(15:06):
was very close to where the body was found. Now
here's the really crazy thing about Roscoe Artists. One month
before Henry and Leon went to trial, Artists was tried
and convicted for the attack on the eighteen year old girl.
He was sentenced to death. And that fact almost gives
away the punchline, because sure enough, Roscoe Artists was prosecuted
(15:26):
by Joe Freeman Britt himself for a crime nearly identical
to the one Britt was prosecuting Henry and Leon. For
the similarities between Artists other murders and Sabrina's death should
have been unmistakable. Those are warning signs, stop lights to say, hey,
wait a minute, let's see what really happened here, Let's
(15:47):
look at people who more fit the profile. Well, Roscoe
Artists was no stranger to law enforcement. That's what's so
mind boggling about this case. It was all they're ready
to be done right, and it has done so wrong,
so wrong, This horrible, tragic nightmare could have been averted
from the very get go, and the woman who Rascoe
(16:09):
Artists killed less than a month after Sabrina Booie was killed,
her life might have been saved. Not everyone overlooked the
similarities between these murders. We know this because of what
happened with a piece of forensic evidence in the case,
a single unidentified fingerprint found on one of the beer
cans near Sabrina's body. Three days before Henry and Leon's
(16:31):
trial started. The police sent a request to the state
crime Lab to compare that beer can fingerprint to the
fingerprints of Roscoe Artists. But Joe Freeman Britt, even before
the crime lab had time to do the testing, Britt
charged ahead with Henry and Leon's trial, and that trial
(16:51):
was hardly a fair fight. You've got the deadliest d
a facing off against two disabled teenagers never stood a chance.
It's it's going to be their word against the word
of the police when this case goes to trial. How's
somebody with a fifty six i Q or i Q
supposed to try to match their wits with prosecutor like
(17:14):
Joe Freeman Britt. The heartbreaker was when Henry McCollum took
the stand in his own defense with his typical flare.
Joe Freeman Britt handled that cross examination himself. Didn't that
touch your soul at all? Britt asked, when that little
girl was down on the ground hollering, it didn't touch
my soul. Henry answered, because I didn't kill nobody. He added,
(17:37):
I want to tell you something, Joe Freeman, God got
your judgment right in hell waiting for you. It wasn't enough.
The jury convicted both Henry and Leon based on the confessions.
After the verdicts came back that fingerprint testing appears to
have been canceled. Jefrem Brett was much more concerned and
(17:59):
laser focus on pursuing the death penalty against Henry McCollum
and Leon Brown that he was in finding the real killer.
They failed to pursue a fingerprint examination that I tend
to think would have been very much determinative in this case,
and I have to imagine that Joe Freeman Britt was
part of that decision making process. The defense was never
(18:21):
even told that police had requested fingerprint testing. Instead, that
information remained hidden, and Henry and Leon were sent to
North Carolina's death row. Right alongside Roscoe artists. A few
years later, in a court overturned Henry and Leon's convictions,
but Britt retried them both separately. At Leon's second trial,
(18:44):
the judge dismissed the murder charges against him, so Leon
was convicted only of rape and sentenced to life in prison,
not death. But Henry still faced murder charges and he
was soon convicted again. His attorneys hoped that at least
they might be able to save his life this time,
but they were wrong. When Henrys sentence was read, he
(19:04):
sat silently with his head down on the table like
a scared child. He had to go back to death row.
The case of Sabrina Booie's murder was closed, but not forgotten.
(19:26):
That disabled kid who became a murder suspect because some
high school or thought he looked weird was soon being
singled out by a justice on the United States Supreme Court.
But Henry McCollum's case was getting attention for all the
wrong reasons. It was, and the Supreme Court was debating
whether the United States should still have the death penalty.
(19:46):
In a case from Texas, one Justice Harry Blackman wrote
that the death penalty should be ruled unconstitutional. Justice Blackman
described how lethal injection works, how one human being injects
draw into another human's body in front of an audience,
until the condemned person dies in front of them. The
Justice wrote about his experience of trying for twenty years
(20:10):
to develop rules that would ensure a perfect death penalty process.
After nearly two decades, he declared the task impossible. No
set of rules would be able to guarantee that we
only execute the guilty, and only after the guilty receive
a fair process. From this day forward, Justice Blackman wrote,
I shall no longer tinker with the machinery of death.
(20:34):
Justice Anton and Scalia wrote a scathing rebuttal, and this
is where Henry and his brother Leon come in. Lethal injection.
Justice Scalia wrote, looks pretty desirable compared to some of
the worst murder cases. He urged readers to consider the
case of the eleven year old girl killed by stuffing
her panties down our throat. How enviable a quiet death
(20:56):
by lethal injection compared with that. Justice Leah was talking
about the case of Sabrina Buoy. Justice Scalia said, if
there's every case that warranted the death penalty, it's this one.
Knowing what we know now about Henry Leon's innocence, I
think it completely undermines in a legal or moral argument
behind that statement, because if this case could be held
(21:19):
up as the poster case for the death penalty, and
now we've discovered what an absolute mess of negligence and
railroading it involved, then that means the entire system is undermined.
The years ticked by and that railroading started coming to
light as the record of Joe Freeman Britt started getting
some scrutiny. According to a report by Harvard Law School's
(21:42):
Fair Punishment Project, Britt committed misconduct in fourteen cases. In
Henry McCollum's case, the report said he failed to notify
the defense not only about the beer can fingerprints, but
also about a cigarette butt found near Sabrina's body. In
two thousand five, more than twenty years after Sabrina died,
(22:03):
Henry's post conviction lawyers asked for DNA testing on the
traces of saliva left on the cigarette butt. That testing
found a single male profile, and it didn't belong to
Henry or Leon. That evidence should have been enough to
exonerate them right then and there. The testing wasn't sophisticated
enough at that point to match it to someone else. Basically,
(22:24):
we knew that it wasn't Henry's. We knew that it
wasn't Leon's, but that's all that we knew. The profile
couldn't be run through the national DNA database, and so
Henry and Leon were denied exoneration because their lawyers couldn't
tell the state whose DNA it really was. It took
nearly nine years for the case to regain momentum. With
(22:45):
the help of another inmate, Leon wrote to the North
Carolina innocenc in Quirky Commission and asked them to look
into his case. The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission is
an independent state agency charged with investigating claims of actual innocence.
(23:06):
But the Commission doesn't have an agenda. It's not here
to prove that the defendants did not commit this crime.
It's here to find the truth, and it's the only
statewide agency like it in the country. They commission could say,
we want to test this evidence, we want access to
these records, we want access to these boxes of evidence
(23:27):
that has been sitting on your shelf for thirty years.
Hand them over to us. Right now, so as an
extraordinary power to have. There was no stone left unturned.
They tested every hair, They tested rappers found at the
crime scene. They tested beer cans. They tested all of
her clothing, her blouse, her shoes, her socks, her underpants.
(23:50):
They tested cigarette butts. This time, with more sophisticated testing,
the cigarette butt DNA was able to be identified. It
wasn't Henry's, it wasn't Leon's. When they ran it through
the North Carolina database, they got a hit. They got
a hit to Roscoe artists. We knew of Roscoe artists,
(24:10):
we knew how eerily similar their crimes were Roscoe artists
who was living in the very same community, and a
month later committed a very similar crime. That was enough.
Henry and Leon's lawyers, including Representative Alston, asked the court
to throw out their convictions based on DNA evidence of
(24:31):
the real killer, and on September two, two thousand fourteen,
Henry McCollum and Leon Brown were exonerated in a Robinson
County courtroom as the burden of wrongful conviction was lifted
from him. Leon Brown smiled big, but all Henry McCollum
could do was sit back in his chair, take a
(24:51):
deep breath, and close his eyes. Both men had served
nearly thirty one years in prison. Now fine, they were
going home. No, what's my name's right? That's rights to
(25:22):
make a doubly official. Both Henry and Leon received pardons
from the North Carolina Governor in June two thousand fifteen.
Joe Freeman Britt remained a firm believer in their guilt.
When he heard about the pardons, Britt called the governor
a damn fool. Today, Rosco Artiss remains behind bars in
North Carolina. On appeal, his death sentence was converted to
(25:43):
life in prison. For his part. Joe Freeman Britt died
in two thousand sixteen. So here's the thing. During the
thirty one years that Henry spent on death row, he
went through two capital trials. Twenty four jurors evaluated the
evidence against him, and they all voted to convict. Over
(26:05):
the years, more than twenty judges reviewed the case against
him and said they found nothing wrong. Twelve defense attorneys
represented him over the years. They all did their jobs
just as the system expects them to. If it weren't
for the Innocence Inquiry Commission, Henry would probably be dead today,
executed by lethal injection. But North Carolina is the only
(26:27):
state with a commission like that, even though twenty seven
other states have the death penalty, and the commission can
only take a tiny fraction of the cases that are
brought to it. So I have to agree with Supreme
Court Justice Blackman. We can have the best process in
the world, but there is no such thing as a
perfect death penalty. They're going to be errors in the
(26:48):
fact that in some parts of a state the death
penalty is sought more frequently than in other parts of
the state. They're going to be errors in the kinds
of cases, whether they're high publicity cases or not, or
in the race of the victim. They're going to be
disparities in the way these decisions are made. It's a
human endeavor, so there are going to be errors. Henry
(27:14):
McCollums not alone. To date, one hundred and seventy two
people have been exonerated off death rows nationwide, including at
least nine in North Carolina. Have we saved every innocent
person sentenced to death? There's no way we haven't executed
an innocent person, and it'll happen again until we abolish
(27:35):
the death penalty for good. You know, someone hadn't written
a letter on Leon's behalf to the Innasis and Career Commission,
we would not be here having this conversation. Henry and
Leon would not have been released. And our criminal justice system,
and our death penalty system in particular shouldn't and can't,
rely on luck to protect innocent people. Thanks to luck, perseverance,
(27:57):
and good lawyering, Henry and Leon are survived Earth. Instead
of living on death row, they can finally just live.
I try to stay busy every day. That's Henry, my
future wife. You know, she makes my days. She sweets
when I get up in the morning, like Robert Clark
(28:18):
in the morning. You know. I make her coffee, which
she drinks the cafe. I drink mine's black with no shig.
But it's a lot of food that I enjoy eating.
I like turn up greens, call up greens, and I said,
my lady is the best one knew how to fix
that baked chicken. For me. It feels good to breathe
(28:41):
this air out here. It's good to have my freedom again.
And here's Leon. My favorite thing to do is really
all listen to the radio, Old easy R and b
classes and seventies and eighties and nineties. Some of those
who storms stones that they don't make momot here the group.
(29:06):
You know. I try to treat everybody the way I
would want to be treated. I guess that's why they
lightening the way they do. They keep me going, keep
me laughing, and you know, might be here for you
know it the way the day be going. Man, it's
always something to do. This episode is dedicated to Henry
(29:35):
and Leon and to all the brave lawyers fighting to
abolish the death penalty. Steve and I salute you. That's
the story of Henry McCollum and Leon Brown. Join us
next week when we tell you about Tyra Patterson. Tyra
was just nineteen when she falsely confessed to stealing a necklace,
(29:55):
but because of an arcane legal rule, that confession to
stealing was to into a conviction for murder. Wrongful conviction.
False Confessions is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
in association with Signal Company Number one Special thanks to
our executive producers Jason Slam and Kevin Wardis. Our production
(30:18):
team is headed by Senior producer and Pope, along with
producers Josh Hammer, and Jess Shane. Our show is mixed
by Genie Montalvo. John Colbert is our intrepid intern. Our
music was composed by j Ralph. You can follow me
on Instagram or Twitter at Laura and II Writer, and
you can follow me on Twitter at s driven. For
(30:38):
more information on the show, visit Wrongful Conviction podcast dot com.
Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
wrong Conviction
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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