A 71-year-old African-American man will receive $7.15 million in compensation after spending nearly half a century in prison for a murder he did not commit in Oklahoma in the central United States.
• Read also: He was acquitted after 48 years in prison, and was given only 5 years to live due to cancer.
• Read also: In the United States, a man was declared innocent after 48 years in prison.
Before his exoneration last year, Glenn Simmons was the longest-serving prisoner in U.S. history, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.
He was released after 48 years, 1 month and 18 days in prison, and filed a complaint against the city of Edmond, Oklahoma, and against an inspector who helped arrest him.
The city's city council on Monday approved a financial agreement to avoid a legal battle, according to public documents.
Mr. Simmons' lawyers explained in a press release published Tuesday that this compensation ends “part” of the proceedings taken “against the cities and police who falsified evidence (…) to accuse him of murder.”
“Mr. Simmons has spent a tragically long time in prison for a crime he did not commit,” insisted Elizabeth Wang, one of his attorneys. “While he will never get that time back, this agreement with Edmond will allow him to move forward while continuing to assert his rights against Oklahoma City and the whistleblower.”
The city of Edmond, contacted by AFP, declined to comment.
Mr. Simmons was sentenced to death in 1975, along with another man, Don Roberts, for the murder of a liquor store clerk during a robbery in Edmond.
The sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment.
The two men were convicted on the simple testimony of a store customer, a teenager, who was shot in the head during the robbery but survived.
The teenager claimed to have recognized them during an identification session, but a subsequent investigation cast doubt on her claims.
During the trial, the two men explained that they were not in Oklahoma on the day of the killing.
US courts overturned Mr. Simmons' conviction in July 2023. He was formally acquitted in December.
Don Roberts, the other convict in the case, was released from prison in 2008, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.
