On Wednesday morning, two North Carolina men who were wrongly convicted of murder over thirty years ago were finally released from prison. Leon Brown and his half-brother Henry McCollum escaped death row as they were released from the Maury Correction Institution near Greenville, N.C. The brothers are North Carolina’s longest-serving inmates on death row after spending more than thirty years behind bars for a crime they did not commit.

In 1983, McCollum and Brown were arrested and charged for the rape and murder of Sabrina Buie, an 11-year-old-girl from North Carolina. At the time, McCollum was 19 years old, and Brown was just 15 years old. New DNA evidence proves that they men are innocent and links the crime to Roscoe Artis, a man who is already serving time in a North Carolina prison for a separate crime. On Tuesday, McCollum and Brown’s convictions were overturned when a judge cited that no physical evidence linked either of the men to the crime scene. Many questions have since risen concerning the country’s justice system. Evidence suggests that both McCollum and Brown have “intellectual disabilities” and were suffering from these disabilities at the time of the murder. McCollum’s lawyer brought up an interesting point when he said, “It’s terrifying that our justice system allowed two intellectually disabled children to go to prison for a crime they had nothing to do with, and then to suffer there for 30 years.” Much attention is also being drawn to the police department in Red Springs, a small town of  south of North Carolina, after finding false confessions the teenagers were forced to sign, which then led to their arrest. Additionally, the town’s police force is under strong investigation for hiding crucial boxes of evidence up until last month. This evidence was able to prove the innocence of the men and exonerate them from the crime.

Many years have passed since the two men have seen the outside world, such that McCollum had to ask for assistance from a cameraman to help get his seatbelt on. Both the men and their families are overjoyed that they are finally released and no longer facing the death penalty. Justice and answers are also finally brought to the family and friends of Sabrina Buie after all these years of unanswered questions.