Hours after his half brother was freed from North Carolina's death row, a 46-year-old man who was serving a life sentence in the death of a young girl also walked out a free man.
A judge on Tuesday overturned the convictions of both men because of new DNA evidence in the case.
Leon Brown was freed at 1 p.m. Wednesday from Maury Correctional Institution outside Greenville. His half brother, 50-year-old Henry McCollum, earlier walked out of Central Prison in Raleigh.
McCollum was one of the state's longest-serving death row inmates.
Both had been convicted in the 1983 rape and murder of 11-year-old Sabrina Buie in Robeson County. Lawyers for the men petitioned for their release after DNA evidence from a cigarette butt recovered at the crime scene pointed to another man.
That man is serving a life sentence for a similar rape and slaying that happened less than a month after Buie was killed.