DNA frees death-row siblings

By Teri Genova, CNN

updated 8:11 AM EDT, Wed September 3, 2014

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

(CNN) -- A pair of siblings who served decades behind bars in the rape and murder of a North Carolina child will walk out of prison free men Wednesday after DNA evidence implicated someone else.

Henry McCollum and Leon Brown were just teenagers when they were arrested in 1983 and charged with the rape and murder of 11-year-old Sabrina Buie in Red Springs, about 30 miles southeast of Fayetteville in rural Robeson County.

Buie's body was found in an area of Red Springs known as something of a "lovers' lane," according to Joe Freeman Britt, the district attorney who prosecuted them in the '80s. The ground was littered with "beer cans, condoms and cigarettes," Britt said.

It was one of those cigarette butts that ultimately set them free.

DNA found on a cigarette "matched another individual named Roscoe Artis, a convicted rapist and murderer who lived less than 100 yards from where the victim's body was found," said a statement from McCollum's and Brown's attorneys.

Artis is serving a life sentence in a North Carolina prison on a separate conviction. It was not immediately clear Tuesday whether prosecutors would bring charges against him for Buie's murder.

CNN Original Series: 'Death Row Stories'

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DNA frees death-row siblings