On September 25th, 1983 in Red Springs, North Carolina, an 11 year old girl named Sabrina Biue was raped and murdered with her own underwear stuffed down her throat.  19 year old Henry McCollum was brought into questioning after students at the high school started rumors that he committed the murders because he “looked weird.”  After a long interrogation process where McCollum was fed facts about his case and coerced into a confession, he confessed to the crime and implicated 4 others including his 15 year old half brother Leon Brown.  Brown was brought in for the same interrogation that day and was also forced into confession.  What is important to note about this case is that both men were mentally challenged and with low IQs which contributed to their false confessions.

 

In court, the confessions stayed the main source of evidence against the men but the introduction of witness L.P. Sinclair, who supposedly saw the two men committing the crime, furthered the case for the prosecution.  It was later determined by polygraph tests and confession from Sinclair that he did not have any idea that McCollum and Brown were the two perpetrators.  There was also no forensic evidence at all that linked either man to the crime.  

 

After being convicted and sentenced to death in 1984 and being retried individually in 1991 with Brown being reconvicted and sentenced to death and McCollum being convicted of rape and sentenced to life in prison in 1992, the men would continue to fight for their innocence while behind bars.  Eventually, with the assistance of the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, the men were proven innocent with DNA backing them, the evidence against them falling apart with Sinclairs confession to not truly knowing any useful information, and a man named Roscoe Artis being a much more accurate suspect of the crime, the men were finally released and exonerated in 2014.  

 

This case happened as a result of witness perjury and false confession and cost this pair of brothers years of their lives for a crime they did not commit.