US Groveland rape 1949

US judge clears men wrongly accused of rape after 72 years

They were accused of abducting and raping the girl in the central Florida town of Groveland in 1949.

Charles Greenlee, Walter Irvin, Samuel Shepherd and Ernest Thomas - known as the Groveland Four - were pardoned by the state of Florida in January 2019.

None of the accused men lived to see themselves exonerated.

They were aged between 16 and 26 at the time.

Thomas was hunted down by a posse of more than 1,000 men shortly after the alleged incident and was shot hundreds of times.