Longest serving wrongful conviction exoneree in US history, Glynn Simmons, has reached partial settlement of $7.15 million in his civil rights lawsuit
OKLAHOMA CITY – A young Black man wrongfully imprisoned and sentenced to death a half century ago, Glynn Simmons, has reached a partial settlement of $7,150,000 in his civil rights lawsuit against the cities and police who falsified evidence and suppressed exonerating evidence to frame him for murder.
In late December 1974 at the time of the crime he was later accused of, Simmons was 700 miles away in Harvey, Louisiana celebrating the holidays with family and friends.
No physical evidence ever connected him to the crime. The only “evidence” against him was grossly falsified police line-ups and reports and police manipulation of a victim who briefly witnessed the crime before being horribly injured during it.
The witness was first interviewed four days after the crime, but her descriptions of the suspects were vague and unhelpful. She told one of the defendant police officers in the present lawsuit that she did not believe she could remember more if given more time because “it would get all jumbled up in my mind.” Months later, the witness identified two other individuals in line-ups who were not Simmons.
The two police officers named in Simmons’s suit, the late Edmond Detective Sgt. Anthony Garrett and retired Oklahoma City Detective Claude Shobert, hid the fact that the witness had identified other individuals and not Simmons, as well as a report documenting this evidence of innocence. The officers also wrote up a false report claiming that the witness had identified Simmons when she had not.
Only as the result of an investigator uncovering the suppressed reports decades later was Simmons finally exonerated. During the entirety of his decades-long wrongful incarceration, Simmons, now 71 years old, has maintained that he was innocent. He was finally released from prison in 2023.
Last night, the Edmond City Council authorized a $7,150,000 settlement with Simmons. This settlement resolves only Simmons’s claims against the City of Edmond and the estate of Anthony David Garrett, former Edmond detective. Simmons’s claims against the City of Oklahoma City and retired Oklahoma City Detective Claude Shobert remain pending.
Simmons’s lead attorney, Elizabeth Wang, said, “Mr. Simmons spent a tragic amount of time incarcerated for a crime he did not commit. Although he will never get that time back, this settlement with Edmond will allow him to move forward while also continuing to press his claims against the Oklahoma City defendants. We are very much looking forward to holding them accountable at trial in March.”
In the lawsuit, Simmons is represented by Jon Loevy, Elizabeth Wang and Jordan Poole of the national civil rights law firm Loevy & Loevy, Joseph Norwood of Norwood Law Firm P.C. of Tulsa, and John Coyle, III of Coyle Law Firm of Oklahoma City.
Loevy & Loevy is one of the nation’s largest civil rights law firms, and over the past decade has won more multi-million dollar jury verdicts than any other civil rights law firm in the country.
Joseph Norwood is a highly experienced trial lawyer, out of Tulsa OK, with 20 years’ experience practicing business law, personal injury, family, civil rights and criminal defense. In addition to proving Glynn Simmons’ innocence, his many accomplishments also include proving the innocence of a client who was wrongfully convicted of murder and imprisoned for 28 years. Coyle Law Firm, who served as Norwood’s local counsel in OKC on Simmons’ post-conviction, is a team of criminal defense professionals boasting a proven track record for countless “not guilty” verdicts. John W. Coyle III was the recipient of the Clarence Darrow Award as Oklahoma’s Outstanding Criminal Defense Lawyer in 1995 and recipient of the Barry Albert Award from the Oklahoma County Criminal Defense Lawyers Association for Excellence in Advocacy in 2005.