Freed inmate who served almost 44 years for rape he didn't commit says $750,000 he got in compensation is far from enough

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the party is always right.

George Orwell, he/his/him

man who served nearly 44 years in prison for a crime he says he didn't commit has received compensation from the state of North Carolina.

Ronnie Long told The Charlotte Observer it's not nearly enough.

Long received $750,000. It is by law the state's top compensation for victims of wrongful incarceration.

Long was convicted by an all-White jury in Concord of raping the widow of a Cannon Mills executive in 1976. Potentially exculpatory evidence was either intentionally withheld from his defense team or disappeared. And there was a tampered pool of potential jurors.

A federal court overturned Long's conviction. He was released from prison in September. And he was pardoned by Gov. Roy Cooper.

Long said his mother and father both asked if he was home in the last moments of their lives. He walked free six weeks after his mother's death.

"Ain't no way in hell that you put me in the penitentiary and then tell me what I'm worth", Long, described by the Observer as angry, remarked during a phone interview.

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Freed inmate who served almost 44 years for rape he didn't commit says $750,000 he got in compensation is far from enough

He MUST sue. DA, police, anyone guilty for this travesty.