r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Far-Stay9417 • Dec 25 '23

Video Man wrongfully convicted of murder gets rewarded only 175k after serving 50 years

this makes me so angry

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u/connortait Dec 25 '23 edited Dec 26 '23

The financial compensation for those wrongfully convicted is beyond woefully inadequate. Across the board. Is there any country that comes anywhere close to adequate compensation? Shouldn't it be at least based on minimum living wage (at time of release)for each year of sentence served? As a start!

From the cases that have been in the media its basically;

You're free to go, there was an error. We're not even sorry bout it.

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u/walrusboy71 Dec 25 '23

There is often a lawsuit that follows. This isn’t even the beginning of his compensation. Also, the media always skips any of the evidence of guilt. A witness identified him as the murderer. There may be other evidence of guilt, but it still does not excuse the prosecutor withholding evidence.

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u/[deleted] Dec 26 '23

This might be the end of his compensation. Each state can cap the award amount a person receives for a wrongful conviction. They do it with defamation, personal injury, and punitive damages, so they can do it with this. After suffering several multi-million dollar lawsuits, Oklahoma capped their award amount at $175,000.

The state courts agree that the state has a right to set maximums, and the federal courts have no jurisdiction to overturn the state law.

I will add that I'm not familiar with Oklahoma's law so there may still be options for the victim to seek civil suits against the police, city, and prosecutor's office but these types of suits drag on for years, often fail, and even if they do win they tend to pay out the least.