Oklahoma City has agreed to pay $7.15 million in compensation to Glynn Ray Simmons, a former death row inmate who spent nearly 50 years in prison before being exonerated. Simmons, now 71, became the longest-serving inmate to later be declared innocent.
His wrongful conviction stemmed from a 1974 robbery and murder of a liquor store clerk, Carolyn Rogers. After decades of incarceration and facing the death penalty, Simmons sued the city of Edmond, Oklahoma, claiming police falsified reports and prosecutors hid critical evidence during his trial.
The lawsuit, according to Fox23 News, accused the police of fabricating reports that wrongly identified Simmons and his co-defendant Don Roberts as the perpetrators of the robbery and murder. It also revealed that police withheld evidence that pointed to other suspects.
Despite being sentenced to death, Simmons’ punishment was reduced to life in prison following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1977 ruling on capital punishment. While Roberts was eventually released on parole in 2008, Simmons continued to fight for his freedom, maintaining that he was in Louisiana at the time of the crime.
In 2023, after years of legal battles, a judge vacated Simmons’ conviction and ordered a new trial. This decision led to his release from prison in July of that year.
District Attorney Vickie Behenna later announced that Simmons would not be retried due to a lack of physical evidence, effectively ending the decades-long legal ordeal. By December 2023, Simmons was officially exonerated and received an additional $175,000 from the state as compensation for his wrongful conviction.
Simmons’ attorney, Elizabeth Wang, emphasized the gravity of the injustice he had suffered, stating that no financial settlement could ever make up for the nearly 50 years of his life lost behind bars.
However, she expressed hope that the compensation would allow him to rebuild his life. Wang stressed that Simmons’ case highlights deep flaws in the criminal justice system, particularly the risks of wrongful convictions based on unreliable evidence and misconduct by authorities.
Simmons’ exoneration represents a rare but significant victory in the fight against wrongful convictions, especially for someone who had been on death row.
His case underscores the importance of holding police and prosecutors accountable for misconduct, as well as the enduring consequences of flawed judicial processes. Despite the settlement, the emotional and psychological toll of his decades-long imprisonment is something no amount of money can ever truly repair.
