Man Spends 44 Years in Prison for Crime He Didn’t Commit, Then Gets $25 Million: “Has Justice Been Served?”

Would you agree to spend 44 years in prison in exchange for $25 million? Ronnie Long didn’t have the opportunity to answer that question when North Carolina State forced the answer on him. This is how on October 1, 1976, the then 21-year-old was accused of rape against a well-known figure from his hometown, as reported by NBC News. In 1976, during the trial, there was no physical evidence of the crime, nor any resemblance to the initial description of the suspect, as Ronnie’s lawyers claimed.

Ronnie Long was then sentenced to 80 years in prison, despite enough evidence to acquit him, which the courts did not accept. “Everything has always been against me, whatever evidence I had against the accusation,” he says on his website. I had to go to prison. I had been chosen and I would have gone”. The American, however, never lost hope of one day regaining freedom. In February 2020, he decided to try his luck again and return to justice, loudly proclaiming his innocence. And here’s the miracle: Ronnie Long was not only heard, but even released into freedom. August 2020. Faced with this unjust conviction, the State of North Carolina was forced to focus on Ronnie. The former prisoner thus found himself with the handsome sum of 750,000 dollars. But it doesn’t end there. Even the city of Concord was forced to turn to Ronnie Long after a civil trial, otherwise the sum was considerable: 25 million dollars (taking 22 million dollars from the city of Charlotte and 3 million dollars from the North Carolina Bureau of Investigation.) For his lawyer, Jamie Lau, “no amount of money can ever compensate for all he has lost, but this is a big step forward for him”. “Has justice been served in this case? Absolutely not.”

In addition to the costly state apology, Ronnie Long also received a public apology. “Mr. Because of this belief, he has long suffered an extraordinary loss of his freedom and a significant part of his life. You have unjustly spent 44 years, 3 months and 17 days in prison for a crime he did not commit ”.

2024-01-11 17:21:00
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