The man who served the longest wrongful conviction in U.S. history is now suing the law enforcement officials whose investigation of a murder nearly 50 years ago led to him spending most of his life in prison.
Attorneys for Glynn Simmons filed a lawsuit in federal court Friday against two former Oklahoma police detectives and their respective departments alleging the two hid evidence that would have proven Simmons’ innocence in a 1974 fatal shooting.
A judge ordered Simmons’ release from prison last year after he served 48 years for his wrongful conviction in the death of Carolyn Sue Rogers , the clerk of a liquor store Simmons was accused of robbing in Edmond, a city around 15 miles north of Oklahoma City.
Simmons’ legal team alleges that retired Oklahoma City detective Claude Shobert and late Edmond detective Sgt. Anthony Garrett hid evidence that would have proven Simmons’ innocence during an Edmond liquor store robbery. Convicted of murder in 1975, Simmons has always maintained he did not commit the crime and insisted he was in Louisiana at the time of the shooting, but he spent 48 years in prison until an Oklahoma County judge ordered him released in 2023 and then determined Simmons to be “actually innocent” later that year.