The State Bureau of Investigation said that the agency and its insurers have agreed to pay more than $12 million to two men who spent a combined 31 years behind bars for crimes it was later found that they didn’t commit. The News & Observer of Raleigh reported that the state agreed to pay $7.85 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Floyd Brown, who was locked up for 14 years in a psychiatric hospital for what his lawyers said was a story made up by an SBI agent.Brown reached a separate agreement with Anson County authorities who investigated his case. The state also agreed to pay $4.625 million to Greg Taylor, who was convicted in 1993 for murder. He spent 17 years behind bars before a three-judge panel declared him innocent in 2010, the first such exoneration by an independent innocence commission in the United States.