A 71-year-old who was declared innocent on December 19 after spending nearly half a century in prison for a murder he did not commit will not be able to enjoy his freedom for long, several American media outlets report.
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Glynn Simmons earlier this month became the longest-serving person in U.S. history before being exonerated.
The latter was convicted in 1975 of murdering a liquor store clerk in Oklahoma.
Initially sentenced to death along with another co-defendant, the African American's sentence was eventually commuted to life imprisonment.
However, a more recent investigation allowed the guilty verdict to be overturned. GLynn Simmons was therefore released in July and officially exonerated on December 19th.
However, the now 71-year-old man suffers from stage four colon cancer and doctors give him little chance of living beyond the next five years.
A crowdfunding campaign has been launched on the GoFundMe platform to help Mr. Simmons pay his normal expenses as well as his medical bills.
“He can’t work. He has to undergo chemotherapy every two weeks,” said one of the septuagenarian’s lawyers, Joe Norwood.
In 2021, Glynn Simmons was diagnosed with cancer. He underwent surgery, but the following year prison doctors discovered a lesion on his liver. He was not treated during his detention due to the pandemic.
“I did not undergo any treatment before I was released from prison,” says the 71-year-old.
“It's good that he's free, but he's lost almost 50 years of his life and now he's dying.” What happened to him is a travesty (of justice), claims Kim T. Cole, another lawyer, who helps Mr. Simmons obtain financial compensation from the American government.