RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – When two wrongfully imprisoned brothers were pardoned after 30 years behind bars, they stood to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation. Now a federal judge is considering whether too much of their payout is being siphoned away by legal fees and high-interest loans.
A court-appointed advocate for one of the brothers argued in a court filing Wednesday that Henry McCollum and Leon Brown were steered into dubious financial arrangements by lawyers who stand to profit from the men’s lawsuit against the investigators who put them behind bars.
Raymond Tarlton, the court-appointed advocate for McCollum, asked federal Judge Terrence Boyle to rule that McCollum wasn’t competent enough to sign the representation agreement with the men’s current lawyers. The judge is scheduled to hear from the attorneys in person at a hearing on Aug. 9.
“These brothers now have come to federal court to hold to account those who wrongfully convicted them,” Tarlton wrote about the men, who have low IQs. “But the intellectual disability that made them vulnerable to coercion thirty-four years ago makes them just as vulnerable today.”
Boyle himself has expressed concerns. In May, the judge rejected a settlement that would have allowed the lawyers to claim $400,000 of $1 million in settlements with a town and two of its investigators.