By Nicole Chavez and Christina Carrega, CNN
A federal jury has awarded $75 million to two brothers in North Carolina, decades after they were convicted of rape and murder they did not commit.
Leon Brown and Henry McCollum were arrested in 1983 and spent nearly 31 years in prison before the half-brothers were exonerated in 2014.
The award is significant because not all exonerees in the United States are guaranteed compensation. The federal government, Washington, DC, and only 35 states have some form of restitution laws, according to the Innocence Project, but advocates say many of them fall short in compensating people.
Like many exonerees around the country, Brown and McCollum opted to file a federal civil rights lawsuit against the government agencies involved in their wrongful convictions – a process that advocates say often takes years and it’s challenging to win.
