A 71-year-old man was found not guilty last Tuesday in the US state of Oklahoma after spending almost 50 years behind bars for a murder he never committed. Glynn Simmons, an African American, had become the person who had spent the longest time in prison in US history before being acquitted, according to the US National Registry of Excuses.
He and another man, Don Roberts, had been sentenced to death in 1975 for the murder of a 30-year-old liquor store clerk during a robbery in Edmond, a city in the state of Oklahoma. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.
The conviction of the two men was based on the simple testimony of a customer of the store, a teenager, who was shot in the head during the robbery, but who survived. The teenager claimed that she had recognized them at the identification meeting, but a subsequent investigation called her claims into question because, during the trial, the two men had stated that they were not in Oklahoma on the day of the murder.
Glynn Simmons was released in July after 48 years, one month and 18 days in prison, and was found not guilty Tuesday by an Oklahoma court, which overturned his conviction. The other man convicted in the case, Don Roberts, was freed in 2008, according to the U.S. National Registry of Exonerations.
“It’s a day we’ve been waiting for for a long, long time,” Simmons told reporters. “We can say that today justice has finally been done.” The former prisoner by mistake is now entitled to compensation. “What’s done is done, but we must be held accountable,” she concluded.
