Glynn Simmons, a 71-year-old man who spent nearly five decades in prison for a crime he did not commit, has been awarded a $7.15 million settlement by the city of Edmond, Oklahoma, United States.
Simmons, who is Black, holds the record for the longest time served before exoneration in U.S. history, according to The National Registry of Exonerations.
After being released last year, Simmons spent 48 years, one month, and 18 days in prison. The city of Edmond reached the settlement after its council voted on Monday to resolve claims against the city and a detective involved in Simmons’s wrongful conviction.
Simmons’s legal team described the payment as a “partial settlement” of his lawsuit against “the cities and police who falsified evidence… to frame him for murder.” His lead attorney, Elizabeth Wang, expressed relief at the settlement but emphasized the loss of time that Simmons can never regain. “Mr. Simmons spent a tragic amount of time incarcerated for a crime he did not commit,” Wang said. “Although he will never get that time back, this settlement with Edmond will allow him to move forward while also continuing to press his claims against Oklahoma City and a leading detective.”
The spokesperson for Edmond declined to comment when approached by AFP.
Simmons and another man, Don Roberts, were sentenced to death in 1975 for the murder of a 30-year-old liquor store clerk during a robbery in Edmond the previous year. Their sentences were later reduced to life imprisonment. The conviction was based solely on the testimony of a teenage customer who survived being shot during the robbery. However, a subsequent investigation raised significant doubts about the reliability of her identification.
Both men maintained that they were not even in Oklahoma at the time of the murder. U.S. District Court Judge Amy Palumbo overturned Simmons’s conviction in July last year, and he was officially declared innocent in December.
Don Roberts, Simmons’s co-defendant, was released from prison in 2008, according to The National Registry of Exonerations, a project managed by three U.S. universities.
