NC man, held without trial for 14 years, is finally released
12.21.07
Floyd Brown, a North Carolina man with mental disabilities, spent 14 years in North Carolina jails and mental facilities awaiting trial on a murder that he always said he didn’t commit. He was never tried because a judge had ruled he was not competent to stand trial. DNA testing couldn’t be conducted in Brown’s case because critical evidence was lost by the Anson County (NC) Sheriff’s Office. And a press investigation of the crime suggests Brown’s confession was false and also turned up evidence of a possible alternate suspect in the murder. The detectives involved in interrogating Brown were later convicted on federal charges of accepting bribes from people in exchange for not filing charges.
A North Carolina judge dismissed the charges against Brown in October and ordered him released from Dorothea Dix Mental Hospital, but he was finally released on Wednesday after his attorneys found placement for him in a group home.
Read the full story here
. (Charlotte Observer, 12/20/2007)
Learn more in the Observer’s investigative archive on the case
.
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