Two brothers who served decades for murders they didn't commit speak out after being freed when it was proved cops ignored evidence in one case and a death row prisoner confessed to the other killing
Two brothers from Tulsa who were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to prison for separate murders are speaking out about their yearslong quest to have their names cleared.
Corey Atchison and Malcolm Scott told their remarkable story to Dateline NBC while revealing disturbing behavior by Tulsa Police, which coerced witnesses to provide testimony leading to their convictions.
'It's important for me for this story to be told so people know that it truly exists,' Scott told NBC News.
The two brothers revealed that they made a pact with one another while they were in prison - whoever got out first would help get the other one out.
The brothers were languishing in prison until a private investigator, Eric Cullen, uncovered wrongdoing by investigators that led to their incarceration.
When asked if there was ever a point over the last 20 years when he thought he was going to die in prison, Atchison, 49, said: ‘Times when you get denied in court you feel low. You just wanna say "give" sometimes.’
Atchison was then asked what his lowest point was.
Malcolm Scott (left), 43, and his brother, Corey Atchison (right), 49, were both wrongfully convicted of murder after Tulsa police coerced witnesses into testifying against them
‘It would have probably been in situations when I wanted to be out there with my daughter [who was born two months after he started his life sentence] to help her and I couldn't,’ he said.
Atchison recalled being asked to give up custody of his newborn daughter.
‘They sent me paperwork tryin' to forfeit my custody, sayin' I was unfit because I was in prison,’ he said.
‘It felt like - I was failin' her. And it felt like it wasn't even my fault.’
Atchison, 49, was freed last year after serving nearly three decades in prison for the 1991 murder of James Lane.
Lane was shot dead in what police called a gang-related killing.
A Tulsa judge ordered Atchison freed from prison after it was revealed that police ignored the testimony of the young men who named a different killer and forced them into fingering Atchison instead.
Atchison, 49, was freed from prison last year after serving nearly three decades in prison for the 1991 murder of James Lane. Lane was shot dead in what police called a gang-related killing
In May 2016, his brother, Malcolm Scott (left), and another black man, De’marchoe Carpenter (right), were freed from prison after serving 22 years behind bars for a crime they didn’t commit
Some 19 years went by and the two men exhausted their appeals when in 2014, Michael Lee Wilson (above), who was moments away from being executed by way of lethal injection, confessed to killing Summers
In May 2016, his brother, Malcolm Scott, and another black man, De’marchoe Carpenter, were freed from prison after serving 22 years behind bars for a crime they didn’t commit.
In the early morning hours of September 10, 1994, 19-year-old Karen Lashawn Summers, the mother of an infant, was gunned down outside a house party in Tulsa, Oklahoma in a drive-by shooting sparked by rivalries between Bloods and Crips gang members.
Convenience store worker Richard Yost was beaten to death in the 1995 murder that sent Wilson to death row
Some 19 years went by and the two men exhausted their appeals when in 2014, Michael Lee Wilson, who was moments away from being executed by way of lethal injection, confessed to killing Summers.
'Malcolm Scott and De'marchoe Carpenter are innocent,’ Wilson said just moments before his execution.
Wilson was sentenced to death for his role in the brutal 1995 beating death of convenience store clerk Richard Yost.
It was later learned that the two witnesses whose testimony led to the convictions of Scott and Carpenter recanted.
The witnesses alleged that police threatened to charge them with the shooting unless they testified against Carpenter and Scott.
Atchison was in prison when he heard that his younger brother, Malcolm Scott, was also sent away behind bars.
‘At first, I was like, this is my fault because he followed in my footsteps,’ he said.
‘It felt like this was my child being taken away.’
Scott said his brother doesn’t have anything to feel guilty about.
‘I mean, there's no blame on my brother at all,’ Scott told Dateline NBC.
‘And I definitely can't hold him responsible for something that I didn't even do myself.’
The special Dateline NBC episode, The Long Road to Freedom, which is part of the NBC News ‘Inequality in America’ Series, airs on Friday at 10pm Eastern time / 9pm Central.
Two brothers who served decades for murders they didn't commit speak out after being freed when it was proved cops ignored evidence in one case and a death row prisoner confessed to the other killing
![Two brothers who served decades for murders they didn't commit speak out after being freed when it was proved cops ignored evidence in one case and a death row prisoner confessed to the other killing]()
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June 19, 2020
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