RALEIGH, N.C. — Two brothers who falsely confessed under police interrogation to killing an 11- year-old girl were awarded $750,000 each in compensation for the three decades they spent behind bars – a stint that left one of them a broken man, according to his family.

Henry McCollum, 51, appeared calm as a North Carolina commission granted the money to him and half brother Leon Brown, 47, during a hearing. Brown did not attend; he is in the hospital, suffering from health problems that include post-traumatic stress disorder, the brothers’ lawyer said.

McCollum and Brown were released last September after a judge threw out their convictions, citing new DNA evidence that points to another man in the 1983 rape and killing of Sabrina Buie. McCollum had been the longest-serving inmate on North Carolina’s death row. Brown had been sentenced to life in prison.

McCollum, who has been living with his sister, said the money will enable him to support himself and help his family.

“My family, they have struggled for years and years,” he said. “It’s hard out there for them, and I want to help them.”

The governor pardoned the brothers in June, making each man eligible to receive $50,000 from the state for every year spent in prison, with a limit of $750,000. Their attorney said the money will be put in a trust and invested so that the brothers can live off the earnings and won’t have to work.

Sabrina’s body was found in a soybean field in rural Robeson County, cigarette butts, a beer can and two bloody sticks nearby. Defense attorneys said the brothers were scared teenagers with low IQs when they were questioned by police and coerced into confessing. McCollum was 19, Brown 15.

The DNA on the cigarettes didn’t match either one of them, and fingerprints on the beer can weren’t theirs either. No physical evidence connected them to the crime.