Before a judge put aside his life sentence on Tuesday, Glynnn Simmons spent more time behind bars — 48 years, one month and 18 days — than any other person cleared of charges, The New York Times reports. Simmons, 70, spent more than 48 years in prison after being convicted of killing a liquor-store clerk during a robbery in 1975. On Tuesday a judge in Oklahoma County District Court vacated the 48-year-old judgment and sentence at the request of Vicki Zemp Behenna, the Oklahoma County district attorney who reviewed his case and found that important evidence in Simmons’s case had not been turned over to his defense.
Simmons was 22 when he was convicted of first-degree murder in a liquor-store robbery that took place in Edmond, Okla., in December 1974. He and Don Roberts were convicted of killing Carolyn Sue Rogers, a clerk who was shot in the head by two robbers. Initially, Simmons and Roberts were sentenced to the death penalty, which became life sentences in the 1970s. Roberts was released on parole in 2008.