Timeline: A judge finally sent Norwood.Law client Glynn Simmons home after 48 years in prison. Here’s what happened.

As a result of the conviction being vacated and case dismissed, the National Registry of Exonerations, which is maintained by the University of California Irvine and partner schools, said it would be entering Simmons into the organization’s database. That action would make Simmons the longest-serving exonerated man in recorded U.S. history.

But after 48 years in prison, authorities left Simmons with virtually no money, little means to support himself, and an ongoing fight with liver cancer. In an effort to help Simmons rebuild his life on the outside of prison, a GoFundMe account has been created in his name. 

Below is a timeline of events in the Simmons case dating back to decades ago when his extraordinary ordeal began.

• July 1, 1970 The Post-Conviction Procedure Act passed by the Oklahoma Legislature goes into effect. This critical law enables people like Glynn Simmons who are convicted of serious crimes to have a court take a new look at their cases. Previously unavailable evidence, excessively harsh sentences, or unconstitutional acts committed by the government can be cited to trigger such reviews.

• Dec. 30, 1974 Two men walk into a liquor store at West 7th Street and South Broadway in Edmond, Oklahoma, intending to rob it. One of the men shoots and kills a clerk. A second clerk is left alive. Unaware of what’s taking place, an 18-year-old customer enters the store with a fake ID and glimpses at the men for a few seconds. She is shot in the head but survives. The perpetrators leave with approximately $1,000. The second clerk, Norma Hankins, had stood directly in front of the perpetrators and handed them the money. Later, however, she struggles to describe the men and cannot make confident identifications during lineups.

• Jan. 2, 1975 Just days after the robbery, surviving witness Belinda Sue Brown is interviewed at a hospital by the Edmond Police Department. She gives a broad description of the perpetrators. The detectives ask whether she could remember additional details if given more time. According to a police report, she says: “I think if I waited much longer, it would get all jumbled up in my mind, and it wouldn’t be all the same.”

• Jan. 22, 1975 Witness Belinda Brown identifies Frederick Lee Brooks in a photo lineup of 21 other men. Brooks had reportedly been bragging about shooting a white woman in Edmond. But Brown can’t identify him again the following day in a live lineup of just four people. Brooks additionally has an alibi, and police also subject him to a polygraph as well as search his house. Nothing points to Brooks as a perpetrator. Later in the case, Simmons and his co-defendant, Don Roberts, are never given lie-detector tests like Brooks.

• Feb. 7 and 8, 1975 Witness Belinda Brown participates in two suspect lineups. A police report about the lineups is not turned over to Simmons for his trial and not discovered for 20 years. It raises critical questions about two men Brown identifies whose names are blacked out. The first man Brown picks “is the one that I did not see that well.” The second was the one who exchanged hellos with her “I think.” Brown picks the same two men the following day. According to the police report, one of the men appears to be Delbert Patterson who was present during two unrelated murders that occurred around the same time of the liquor-store robbery. Delbert Patterson admits he was there when his brother, Leonard, committed the unrelated killings, but Delbert was never charged. Five weeks have passed since the liquor-store robbery occurred when Belinda Brown makes her lineup identifications. Experts say that the reliability of human memory begins to fade after about three weeks, the point in time when Brown falsely identified Frederick Lee Brooks.

• Feb. 8, 1975 Mystifyingly, a separate, one-page document seems to show that Belinda Brown did identify Simmons and co-defendant Don Roberts during a lineup. Meanwhile, Simmons and Roberts say they only knew one another by coincidence from meeting at a party some time before the robbery. Simmons says he had not moved to Oklahoma City for a job from Louisiana until after the robbery. At his trial, he is unable to challenge discrepancies in the suspect lineup reports, because he doesn’t have the document showing the possibility of two other men being identified by Belinda Brown.

• Feb. 8, 1975 Simmons and Roberts are in custody at the Oklahoma County Detention Center and questioned about where they were during the liquor-store robbery. Roberts says that while he had been in Oklahoma City earlier in December, he was back in Dallas where his father lived when the robbery happened. Simmons says he was in Harvey, Louisiana, at the time and didn’t arrive in Oklahoma until January. 

• March 25, 1975 A preliminary hearing occurs in which a judge determines whether the case should proceed to trial. During the hearing, witness Belinda Brown admits to identifying two men other than Simmons and Roberts during suspect lineups. Brown later insists at trial that she didn’t, in fact, identify other people but merely had selected parts of faces.

• June 4, 1975 The trial takes place for approximately two days with an all-white jury. Witness Brown identifies Don Roberts as the shooter and Glynn Simmons as the other suspect in the robbery. Henry Floyd, the attorney for Glynn Simmons, says in closing arguments: “Homicide is heinous. We all must be opposed to it. But we cannot allow one wrong to lead us to commit two additional wrongs.” 

• June 5, 1975 Simmons and Roberts are found guilty of first-degree murder.

• July 24, 1975 Simmons and Roberts are sentenced to die by Oklahoma County District Judge Joe Cannon.

• May 9, 1977 The death sentences of Simmons and Roberts are amended to life in prison following a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court the previous year. The high court had determined that the way in which many states were then administering the death penalty was unconstitutional. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals simultaneously rejects an attempt by Simmons to have his conviction thrown out.

• Sept. 25, 1979 The same district judge in Oklahoma City who sentenced Simmons to death denies one of several of his applications for post-conviction relief seeking a new determination based on his innocence. Another such application is denied on March 1, 1982. Attempts over time by Simmons to find relief in federal court and before the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board are also not successful.  

• Dec. 23, 1981 New questions about the fairness of Simmons’s trial emerge after the court-appointed attorney who represented him, Henry Floyd, is disbarred by the state Oklahoma Supreme Court following 23 ethics violations. They include “neglect of clients” and “failure to return retainer fees after being fired by clients.” Floyd was eventually reinstated to the Oklahoma Bar Association.

• March 20, 1995 A prosecutor who helped send Simmons to prison, Robert Mildfelt, has second thoughts about the case. He writes letters on behalf of Simmons. In them, Mildfelt admits that the case had “troubled” him for years, because the evidence was so “thin.” He says that the physical description witness Belinda Brown gave of the perpetrators didn’t match Simmons’s stature. 

• June 2, 1996 A private investigator helping Simmons with his case uncovers a critical police report that raises doubts about whether the star witness, Belinda Brown, identified Simmons and Roberts or, in fact, two other men during police lineups.

• April 23, 1997 With the new lineup report in hand, Simmons files an application for post-conviction relief in Oklahoma City on several grounds. Among other things, Simmons argues that witness Brown made a misidentification and then was allowed to give false testimony about it. Simmons is nonetheless denied once more. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals affirms the denial. 

• Nov. 5, 2003 News station KFOR-TV and reporter Ali Meyer in Oklahoma City air the first of what would become numerous in-depth stories over 20 years questioning whether Simmons was guilty. Janice Smith, a sister of shooting victim Carolyn Sue Rogers, says in one such story that she believes Simmons did not commit the crime. 

• Nov. 1, 2019 A new Oklahoma law on eyewitness identifications passed by Oklahoma lawmakers and the governor goes into effect. Lineups must be “blind,” meaning the person administering them must not know if the suspect is present. The eyewitness must also be told that the suspect may or may not be present. If an identification is made, the eyewitness must describe the level of certainty.

• Sept. 13, 2021 The criminal-justice reality show “Reasonable Doubt” airs an episode dedicated to the Simmons case. They interview a juror from the original trial named Liz Thornton. On camera, Thornton changes her mind about the case as she learns that the star witness had identified someone else earlier in the investigation and that a prosecutor had admitted to doubts about Simmons’s guilt. The show’s hosts – a retired homicide detective and criminal defense attorney – say they believe Simmons is innocent and has been “railroaded.”

• Sept. 22, 2021 Norwood.Law recruits PhD psychologist Dr. Curt Carlson from Texas A&M University to examine the Simmons case. He returns with detailed findings that are backed by dozens of research studies challenging the accuracy of Belinda Brown’s eyewitness testimony. Among other things, Carlson writes that Brown showed a troublingly low confidence in her decisions. Also, a few seconds was not long enough for Brown to encode details about the suspects into her memory. Brown additionally sustained a traumatic brain injury during the robbery, which would impair her ability to recall the experience. Then Dr. Carlson points to several issues with the lineup procedures.

• Oct. 7, 2021 Fourteen total alibi witnesses have now testified or stated in sworn testimony that they saw or were with Simmons during the holidays of 1974 in Harvey, Louisiana, meaning he could not have been in Oklahoma City. Among them is Anthony Williams who states in an affidavit: “I heard through friends that he was arrested for a murder that occurred on Dec. 30th, 1974, in Oklahoma. I was shocked, because he was not in Oklahoma at that time.” Simmons is affectionately known in Harvey by the nickname “Nubs.”  

• March 8, 2022 Norwood.Law files an exhaustive application for post-conviction relief on behalf of Simmons in Oklahoma County District Court after taking on the Simmons case. An amended application is filed on Sept. 10, 2022. It makes several points arguing that Simmons did not commit robbery and murder in 1974. “Simmons and Roberts both agreed to speak with the authorities after being arrested. They explained to the detectives where they were at the time of the crime and gave the detectives names and contact information of people to verify the alibis. … The police did not do an investigation into Simmons’s alibi at all.” 

• April 14, 2023 Days before a crucial hearing, Oklahoma County District Attorney Vicki Behenna requests that Simmons’s 1975 conviction be vacated and a new trial be held. Behenna’s office admits that the missing police report on suspect lineups led to an unfair trial for Simmons. She also acknowledges that one of the original prosecutors after the trial developed “concerns” about the case. 

• April 18, 2023 An evidentiary hearing is held in Oklahoma City before Oklahoma County District Judge Amy Palumbo to consider Norwood.Law’s application for post-conviction relief. Several people testify, including alibi witnesses from Louisiana, psychologist Curt Carlson, and a prosecutor from the original 1975 trial. Attorney Joseph M. Norwood argues to Judge Palumbo: “Mr. Simmons had multiple opportunities to say he did it to try and get parole. Yet he was denied parole repeatedly, in large part because he refused to say he did something that he didn’t do.”

• May 3, 2023 While weighing what action to take in the Simmons case, Judge Palumbo requests that both sides file special briefs. She wants to know how the Oklahoma death penalty case of Richard Glossip, which has attracted worldwide attention, should inform her decision. In response, Norwood.Law says the cases are procedurally distinguished by the fact that Glossip remains on death row while Simmons had his death sentence amended to life in prison during the 1970s.

• July 20, 2023 Judge Palumbo agrees to vacate the 1975 conviction, and Simmons is released on bond pending a new trial. He touches free soil for the first time in 48 years. A new trial is scheduled for Oct. 23, 2023. Simmons tells KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City: “I’m free now. It’s indescribable. I did 48 years. … I’m ready to move on and make something of my life.”

• Sept. 11, 2023 Oklahoma County District Attorney Vicki Behenna formally requests that the case against Simmons be dismissed. Her office discloses that Belinda Brown – upon whom the entire case relies  – is mysteriously “not available” for a new trial. Also, the involved detectives are deceased or unavailable. Prosecutors additionally acknowledge the allegation by Norwood.Law that an alternate suspect is identifiable (Delbert Patterson) in the lineup report withheld from Simmons at his 1975 trial. Behenna’s office says in a media release: “When considering whether to pursue the case against Simmons again, the district attorney determined the state [would] not be able to meet its burden at trial and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Simmons was responsible for Ms. Rogers’s murder.” 

• Sept. 19, 2023 Judge Palumbo agrees to dismiss the case against Simmons. Her decision means Simmons will not face a new trial and not be viewed as a convicted murderer in the eyes of the law. The nonprofit National Registry of Exonerations says it will enter Simmons into the organization’s database. The move would make him the longest-serving exonerated man in recorded U.S. history at 48 years in prison.