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.
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?