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Talk about winning the lottery.........too bad the money will all be gone within a few years..
Texas DNA exonerees find prosperity after prison
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AP – Shown Tuesday, August 25, 2009 is Thomas McGowan, a DNA exoneree released last year after nearly 23 years …
By JEFF CARLTON, Associated Press Writer – Fri Sep 4, 1:13 pm ET
DALLAS – Thomas McGowan's journey from prison to prosperity is about to culminate in $1.8 million, and he knows just how to spend it: on a house with three bedrooms, stainless steel kitchen appliances and a washer and dryer.
"I'll let my girlfriend pick out the rest," said McGowan, who was exonerated last year based on DNA evidence after spending nearly 23 years in prison for rape and robbery.
He and other exonerees in Texas, which leads the nation in freeing the wrongly convicted, soon will become instant millionaires under a new state law that took effect this week.
Exonerees will get $80,000 for each year they spent behind bars. The compensation also includes lifetime annuity payments that for most of the wrongly convicted are worth between $40,000 and $50,000 a year — making it by far the nation's most generous package.
"I'm nervous and excited," said McGowan, 50. "It's something I never had, this amount of money. I didn't have any money — period."
His payday for his imprisonment — a time he described as "a nightmare," " " and "slavery" — should come by mid-November after the state's 45-day processing period.
Exonerees also receive an array of social services, including job training, tuition credits and access to medical and dental treatment. Though 27 other states have some form of compensation law for the wrongly convicted, none comes close to offering the social services and money Texas provides.
The annuity payments are especially popular among exonerees, who acknowledge their lack of experience in managing personal finances. A social worker who meets with the exonerees is setting them up with financial advisers and has led discussions alerting them to swindlers.
The annuities are "a way to guarantee these guys ... payments for life as long as they follow the law," said Kevin Glasheen, a Lubbock attorney representing a dozen exonerees.
Two who served about 26 years in prison for rape will receive lump sums of about $2 million apiece. Another, Steven Phillips, who spent about 24 years in prison for sexual assault and burglary, will get about $1.9 million.
The biggest compensation package will likely go to James Woodard, who spent more than 27 years in prison for a 1980 murder that DNA testing later showed he did not commit. He eventually could receive nearly $2.2 million but first needs a writ from the state's Court of Criminal Appeals or a pardon from the governor.
McGowan and the others are among 38 DNA exonerees in Texas, according to the Innocence Project, a New York legal center that specializes in overturning wrongful convictions. Dallas County alone has 21 cases in which a judge overturned guilty verdicts based on DNA evidence, though prosecutors plan to retry one of those.
Charles Chatman, who was wrongly convicted of rape, said the money will allow him some peace of mind after more than 26 years in prison.
"It will bring me some independence," he said. "Other people have had a lot of control over my life."
Chatman and other exonerees already have begun rebuilding their lives. Several plan to start businesses, saying they don't mind working but want to be their own bosses. Others, such as McGowan, don't intend to work and hope to make their money last a lifetime.
Some exonerees have gotten married and another is about to. Phillips is taking college courses. Chatman became a first-time father at 49.
"That's something I never thought I'd be able to do," he said. "No amount of money can replace the time we've lost."
The drumbeat of DNA exonerations caused lawmakers this year to increase the compensation for the wrongly convicted, which had been $50,000 for each year of prison. Glasheen, the attorney, advised his clients to drop their federal civil rights lawsuits and then led the lobbying efforts for the bill.
Besides the lump sum and the monthly annuity payments, the bill includes 120 hours of paid tuition at a public college. It also gives exonerees an additional $25,000 for each year they spent on parole or as registered sex offenders.
No other state has such a provision, according to the Innocence Project.
Exonerees who collected lump sum payments under the old compensation law are ineligible for the new lump sums but will receive the annuities. Whether the money will be subject to taxes remains unsettled, Glasheen said.
The monthly payments are expected to be a lifeline for exonerees such as Wiley Fountain, 53, who received nearly $390,000 in compensation — minus federal taxes — but squandered it by, as he said, "living large." He ended up homeless, spending his nights in a tattered sleeping bag behind a liquor store.
But after getting help from fellow exonerees and social workers, Fountain now lives in an apartment and soon will have a steady income.
Fountain's story is a cautionary tale for the other exonerees, who meet monthly and lately have been discussing the baggage that comes with the money.
Chatman said he's been approached by "family, friends and strangers, too."
"It takes two or three seconds before they ask me how much money, or when do I get the money," he said. "Everyone has the perfect business venture for you."
Though appropriately wary, the exonerees say they are excited about having money in the bank.
"You're locked up so long and then you get out with nothing," McGowan said. "With this, you might be able to live a normal life, knowing you don't have to worry about being out on the streets."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090904/...e_millionaires
Talk about winning the lottery.........too bad the money will all be gone within a few years..
LOL. ya kind've like the lottery winners,they wont know what to do with the money
Last edited by PGDynasty24; 09-04-2009 at 08:02 PM. Reason: info
seriously, Italian researchers just found a way to manipulate DNA and even replicate DNA throwing the whole bases for this science under the bus..
All I have to endure is the occassional rape or assault and twenty years in prison? Sign me up! But I guess Nbadan is ok with winning that lottery, as for me, I will pass.
anyone see the obvious caveat? people framing themselves to earn $80k a year for sitting in jail!
Wouldn't they have to prove that someone else framed them?
well, of course you'll pass, it's hard to get to the kido's in prison...
Yeah, they need an accomplice so they can originally frame themselves, then years later their friend can frame some kind of evidence to reveal the original conviction as a frame. A frame of a frame. Duh.
Really, who wouldn't volunteer to live the prison life for 20 prime years of life just to come out on the back-end with some scratch?
There's no replacing time spent in prison and I suspect that the money isn't much consolation for rotting in a jail cell, living a life that is a "nightmare" in " " that is akin to "slavery."
Somebody is projecting.
People with the actual intelligence and for ude to pull something like this off wouldn't have to spend 20 years in jail to earn that money.
But I wouldn't put it past some really dumb people trying it.
No one mentions anything on the ethics of it.
No one mentions anything about how Texas, a state with a reputation for shooting first, asking questions later, and for not caring about the plights of prisoners, has the nations best record for freeing wrongly convicted men, and then paying them in apology.
All we can talk about is how to game the system? Great...
It's an interesting issue. I think if the prisoners were convicted in good faith, then they shouldn't really be allowed res ution. However, if it was shown that evidence was shoddy, then I'd be open to it. It's a tough one.
If you make an honest mistake on your taxes, does the IRS take this view of the error?
We're talking about innocent men erroneously deprived of their freedom by the state. Whether the process that arrives at this result was fair is beside the point. The injury to the man could hardly be more serious short of death. Bona fides makes a piss poor fig leaf in this case.
+1.
I'm about as callused towards people in prison as you can get, but if you are innocent and stuck in there, it doesn't matter why, you should get some res ution for your time in there. I think $80k a year is reasonable. The only thing that I would add is a re-initiation program that introduces them back into society, along with ways to not blow their money. Of course, that may already exist.
What about the flip side of that coin? The people who we know committed a crime, yet get to remain free because someone on the law enforcment / prosecution side botched the case. If we're going to demand perfection from our justice system for one group, shouldn't we do so for the other?
Last edited by coyotes_geek; 09-10-2009 at 03:01 PM.
I think $80,000 a year is kinda high. Probably very few of these guys would've EVER earned anywhere near that salary on the outside.
The power of the state is vast; that of the individual, minute. I have no problem with a system that holds LE to a higher standard, or weighs in favor of the rights of the individual and even of the guilty.
What's the saying?
Better that 10 guilty men go free than that 1 innocent man be imprisoned?
The funny thing is, I seem to recall reading about a land which guaranteed certain inalienable freedoms to individuals, enshrined in a basic written charter. Then I think the story ended when it was decided that you could read whatever you wanted into the charter...and the Chinese lent them a load of money to spend themselves into oblivion.
Unless those 10 men kill 10 more people... Then that may skew the equation.
You may have a point there. I guess I could be on board with such a program that provides res ution, as long as that payout was determined fairly by economists and other specialists.
Not really.
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