Ronnie Long was convicted by an all-white jury in North Carolina on Oct. 1, 1976, after he was accused of raping a white woman in Concord.
A Black North Carolina man who spent 44 years in prison after he was wrongfully convicted of raping a prominent white woman has been awarded a historic $25 million settlement more than three years after he was exonerated.
Ronnie Long, 68, settled his civil lawsuit with the city of Concord, about 25 miles northeast of Charlotte, for $22 million, the city said in a news release Tuesday. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation had previously settled for $3 million, according to Duke Law School’s Wrongful Convictions Clinic.
The clinic, which represented Long, said the settlement is the second largest wrongful conviction settlement recorded.
“It’s, obviously, a celebratory day today knowing that Ronnie’s going to have his means met for the rest of his life with this settlement. It’s been a long road to get to this point so that’s a great outcome,” clinical professor Jamie Lau, Long’s criminal attorney, said in a phone interview Tuesday.
Still seems low. Imagine someone who said, “just sign here. If you make it through the next 44 years without leaving this cell, you’ll win $25 million.” Would anyone take that deal? A settlement is supposed to make a person “whole.”
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I’d settle for heads on plates though.
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Chances are they’re long dead.
88 years each, no parole.
Nothing can give time back and make this right. That being said, 22 million on top of 3 million from another case, I feel is a pretty reasonable settlement. He can live his remaining years in luxury at least. Not sure real justice can be found for so many years of someone’s life wrongfully taken from them.
It isn’t, but it’s enough to let him live the rest of his life rich and make any city think twice about steamrolling anyone. Too bad everyone involved in it is likely already dead.
I am not even 44 yet… this guy has been in prison 4 more years than I have been alive. That’s just insane to even try to comprehend.
I’m close in age to you, and it’s gut-wrenching to come to this realization. A large part of his ‘guilt’ was likely due to his skin tone. Absolutely sickening
How many people spend 45 years in prison on a legitimate rape conviction?
Maybe if a defendant has been proven to commit multiple rapes on top of murder.
I imagine they’d specify that? There is a complete lack of any reference to priors, and in context, that implies there were (because they’d make a point to specify no priors in an article like this…), but just the life sentence on a rape charge, and dude wasn’t paroled, seems a bit much, ya know?
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THATS NOT ENOUGH
Honestly, I don’t think increasing the amount would make a difference. He won’t be able to buy back the years of life they took from him with it. He can use that 25M to spend the years he has left living as rich of a life as he wants, and by all means he deserves it.
I hope he doesn’t end up like those lottery winners who go broke within a year because everyone steals from them and then someone murders ☹️
I don’t think that’s why lotto winners go broke, it’s because the average person is simply bad with money
I also think that being rich requires a certain narcissistic mindset and that the average person is generous and would naturally share if gifted excess wealth
So, I get where you’re coming from here, but $25 million is still an enormous amount of money objectively. Obviously there isn’t really a way to convert 44 years of incarceration into an equivalent financial denomination, but if we think about earnings that could be had in that time, $25 million by far covers it.
If this guy were to have a job paying $100k a year for his whole life, he’d be making well in excess of the average, and still only have about $6 million total earnings by the time they retire. Let’s double it and assume he was making $200k a year for his entire working life, that’s still only half the amount he was awarded. So this amount paid could be said to cover a lifetime of high pay, plus an equivalent amount in damages, plus a little extra on top for good measure.
It’s proportionally correct. I bet lots of people would agree to a year in prison for half a million, but there’s simply no amount that would compensate for half your life in prison. At least this is enough for him to spend the rest of his life doing whatever he wants.
Maybe I’d take the first year in prison for a half a million* but ask me again 1 year later, do you want to do a second year? No, I want 600k. Next year, 700k. 44 years? Honey, you can’t afford it.
* I wouldn’t, my number is higher than that.
I would agree to it with the caveat that it wouldn’t be on my record. Otherwise, it would likely affect potential future earnings.
It’s true, this is quite a lot of money for him to retire with now. Nothing makes up for the lost time but all he can do now is make the best of this and try to enjoy his remaining life.
In this comparison it wouldn’t be on your record since this guy was innocent and exonerated so matching the situation you’d be clean too
Its the oportunity cost. All of the oportunities to have a normal life
Of course, hence why I said that it’s not possible to convert incarceration time into money. Removing agency is to remove possibility to proceed however one sees fit. Likely he would have been financially poorer off, but life isn’t a measure of worth by dollars. Only the most degenerate among us think that bigger numbers in various accounts equates to a good life.
What is?
$26M
I was actually hoping that they would answer.
they didn’t
How so? The original trial was wrong but you can’t fix that by making the victim crazy rich.
With $25 Million dollars you could buy a fleet of Yachts
And the woman who accused him is now going to jail for 44 years, right? Right?
Bruh. Quoted from the article:
"They said that the prosecution’s main piece of evidence was the victim’s identification of Long weeks after the attack and that it was “the product of a suggestive identification procedure arranged by the police to target Long.”
There were also numerous pieces of evidence from the scene, including suspect hair and 43 fingerprints, that could have helped exonerate him, according to his attorneys. The material, which they said did not belong to Long, was tested by investigators but not disclosed. The attorneys also accused Concord police officers of giving false testimony about the evidence at Long’s trial."
It sounds like she was led by the police, and all evidence pointing to the contrary was tossed out.
Seriously. If you’re raped you don’t think “finding my real rapist would be great, but what I would rather do is get some random guy sent to prison because I don’t like black people”
Bruh, it sounds like she was coerced and lead. She likely believed she that she had selected the correct person.
Plus, how is this not on the courts and jurors? They had actual evidence matching someone else that would have exonerated him, they purposefully ensured that he was judged by an all white jury, and they coerced/lead the victim.
Come on now guys, we all fucking know that police play head games with people to get BS confessions. This isn’t hard. They wanted a conviction, and they did whatever they could to get one, no matter whether it was the correct perpetrator or not.
I’m saying a victim would not have chosen the wrong suspect maliciously in general.
Ah, my bad. I completely misread your comment! Sorry about that!
That really should depend.
It’s fucked, but there needs to be malicious intent behind it. If she was actually raped, and really did believe thus guy did it, then no, we shouldn’t be sending actual rape victims to prison.
There’s a difference between a false ID you believe to be true and a false ID given maliciously.
You, and anyone that agrees, should probably read the article.
Blindly reacting to shit and demanding retribution without thinking is exactly how injustices like this happen in the first place.
Honestly it was a very racist trial. You really can’t blame one person.
No amount of money can buy back time.
I honestly don’t know how the state could make this up to him.
He’ll be targeted by the police and killed… Leaving 24.5 millions behind…
They’ll confiscate the remaining 20.3 million…
Sounds like proceeds of crime.
Take this $15 million down the station, officer!
Yes sir. $10 million going right into the evidence locker!
Perhaps no amount of money can adequately compensate for 44 years of misery humiliation and horror, I’d say more money is certainly better than less.
Dang. The US has the worst prison and justice system ever. No focus on rehabilitation, for only punishment.
Not punishment but laking you work for nothing. That is slavery.
I envision this man like the guy Brooks from Shawshank Redemption that hung himself. Being in the prison system for 44 years changes you in ways I’m not sure money can fix. So it’s good that someone had to pay, but he’ll never have those years back, and is now 68 and “free” just as life is about to dial down for him.
Yeah he got fucked out of his life, there is virtually no amount of money that can fix this (trillions perhaps so you can at least play king of the world for a few years before you die).
As if anything the state can do will give him that time back. They might as well have just killed him back then; it would have been more merciful than for him to live with it and for the state to insult him further by pretending money will just make him go away
Like having a 44 year career that feels like prison then you retire with $25 mil. Enough to do some wild things but your family and friends are long gone.
Not unlike a lot of people who give their time to a career in the same way.
Except you get a pretty shitty work-life balance during your whole career. You know many careers that give you 0 hours of life over 44 years?
Exactly he never got Christmas with his family, no holidays at the beach and no change to grow old with his loved ones
And, you know, he had to live in an uncomfortable tiny cell with very little stimulation the whole time.
There might be a few, but you’re always free to change your career if you want. You’re very much not free to just leave peison.
Should be more.
Doesn’t seem like that high of a record.
