Black man who spent 44 years in prison before he was exonerated gets record $25M settlement
Black man who spent 44 years in prison before he was exonerated gets record $25M settlement
Ronnie Long was convicted by an all-white jury in North Carolina on Oct. 1, 1976, after he was accused of raping a white woman in Concord.
Ronnie Long was convicted by an all-white jury in North Carolina on Oct. 1, 1976, after he was accused of raping a white woman in Concord.
A Black North Carolina man who spent 44 years in prison after he was wrongfully convicted of raping a prominent white woman has been awarded a historic $25 million settlement more than three years after he was exonerated.
Ronnie Long, 68, settled his civil lawsuit with the city of Concord, about 25 miles northeast of Charlotte, for $22 million, the city said in a news release Tuesday. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation had previously settled for $3 million, according to Duke Law School’s Wrongful Convictions Clinic.
The clinic, which represented Long, said the settlement is the second largest wrongful conviction settlement recorded.
"It’s, obviously, a celebratory day today knowing that Ronnie’s going to have his means met for the rest of his life with this settlement. It’s been a long road to get to this point so that’s a great outcome," clinical professor Jamie Lau, Long's criminal attorney, said in a phone interview Tuesday.
Still seems low. Imagine someone who said, "just sign here. If you make it through the next 44 years without leaving this cell, you'll win $25 million." Would anyone take that deal? A settlement is supposed to make a person "whole."
Especially in a American prision. Who even paus that? Is that tax payer money? If yes. This is beyond hilarious.
Yup, it's taxpayer money.
The logic is that shit like this will cause voters to demand change and vote in people who will make sure stuff like this doesn't happen again. But the reality is that most voters simply don't care, and there's a non-zero number of voters who are unhappy because they want the black man to stay in prison whether he's innocent or not.
Nothing can give time back and make this right. That being said, 22 million on top of 3 million from another case, I feel is a pretty reasonable settlement. He can live his remaining years in luxury at least. Not sure real justice can be found for so many years of someone's life wrongfully taken from them.
It isn't, but it's enough to let him live the rest of his life rich and make any city think twice about steamrolling anyone. Too bad everyone involved in it is likely already dead.
I am not even 44 yet... this guy has been in prison 4 more years than I have been alive. That's just insane to even try to comprehend.
I'm close in age to you, and it's gut-wrenching to come to this realization. A large part of his 'guilt' was likely due to his skin tone. Absolutely sickening
How many people spend 45 years in prison on a legitimate rape conviction?
Maybe if a defendant has been proven to commit multiple rapes on top of murder.
I imagine they'd specify that? There is a complete lack of any reference to priors, and in context, that implies there were (because they'd make a point to specify no priors in an article like this...), but just the life sentence on a rape charge, and dude wasn't paroled, seems a bit much, ya know?
THATS NOT ENOUGH
Honestly, I don't think increasing the amount would make a difference. He won't be able to buy back the years of life they took from him with it. He can use that 25M to spend the years he has left living as rich of a life as he wants, and by all means he deserves it.
So, I get where you're coming from here, but $25 million is still an enormous amount of money objectively. Obviously there isn't really a way to convert 44 years of incarceration into an equivalent financial denomination, but if we think about earnings that could be had in that time, $25 million by far covers it.
If this guy were to have a job paying $100k a year for his whole life, he'd be making well in excess of the average, and still only have about $6 million total earnings by the time they retire. Let's double it and assume he was making $200k a year for his entire working life, that's still only half the amount he was awarded. So this amount paid could be said to cover a lifetime of high pay, plus an equivalent amount in damages, plus a little extra on top for good measure.
How so? The original trial was wrong but you can't fix that by making the victim crazy rich.
With $25 Million dollars you could buy a fleet of Yachts
And the woman who accused him is now going to jail for 44 years, right? Right?
Bruh. Quoted from the article:
"They said that the prosecution’s main piece of evidence was the victim’s identification of Long weeks after the attack and that it was "the product of a suggestive identification procedure arranged by the police to target Long."
There were also numerous pieces of evidence from the scene, including suspect hair and 43 fingerprints, that could have helped exonerate him, according to his attorneys. The material, which they said did not belong to Long, was tested by investigators but not disclosed. The attorneys also accused Concord police officers of giving false testimony about the evidence at Long's trial."
It sounds like she was led by the police, and all evidence pointing to the contrary was tossed out.
That really should depend.
It's fucked, but there needs to be malicious intent behind it. If she was actually raped, and really did believe thus guy did it, then no, we shouldn't be sending actual rape victims to prison.
There's a difference between a false ID you believe to be true and a false ID given maliciously.
It's not so simple. There's known cases where rape survivors are gaslit by cops into identifying the wrong person as the rapist.
In that case the cops should go to jail.
"Although Concord police had a photo of Long to show Bost, they decided on another route. They asked her to accompany them to the courthouse on May 10, telling Bost that the man who raped her might or might not be present. Bost sat in the second row, disguised with a red wig and sunglasses.
When Long’s case came up an hour or so later, he walked around to the defense table, wearing a flowered leisure shirt and a medium-length brown leather jacket. Even before Long spoke, Bost notified the officers that Long was her attacker. Later, at the police station, Bost picked Long’s photo out of an array. He was the only person in the array wearing a leather jacket."
[Source]
You, and anyone that agrees, should probably read the article.
Blindly reacting to shit and demanding retribution without thinking is exactly how injustices like this happen in the first place.
Honestly it was a very racist trial. You really can't blame one person.
No amount of money can buy back time.
I honestly don't know how the state could make this up to him.
Perhaps no amount of money can adequately compensate for 44 years of misery humiliation and horror, I’d say more money is certainly better than less.
Dang. The US has the worst prison and justice system ever. No focus on rehabilitation, for only punishment.
Not punishment but laking you work for nothing. That is slavery.
Oh yeah, I head North Korean prisons are big on prisoner wellbeing and rehabilitation.
Hey bud? You're comparing the US to a an extremely low-income totalitarian-dictatorship country with the worst human-rights record ever. They literally can't feed their people or keep the lights on. Their per capita GDP is estimated at $654 vs $33,147 for South Korea (and $76,399 for the US).
And still we have the most people incarcerated worldwide (or 6th per capita). Not great...
I envision this man like the guy Brooks from Shawshank Redemption that hung himself. Being in the prison system for 44 years changes you in ways I'm not sure money can fix. So it's good that someone had to pay, but he'll never have those years back, and is now 68 and "free" just as life is about to dial down for him.
Yeah he got fucked out of his life, there is virtually no amount of money that can fix this (trillions perhaps so you can at least play king of the world for a few years before you die).
As if anything the state can do will give him that time back. They might as well have just killed him back then; it would have been more merciful than for him to live with it and for the state to insult him further by pretending money will just make him go away
Like having a 44 year career that feels like prison then you retire with $25 mil. Enough to do some wild things but your family and friends are long gone.
Not unlike a lot of people who give their time to a career in the same way.
Except you get a pretty shitty work-life balance during your whole career. You know many careers that give you 0 hours of life over 44 years?
Should be more.
Doesn't seem like that high of a record.