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A Rural County Owes $28 Million for Wrongful Convictions. It Doesn’t Want to Pay[Nebraska]
The New York Times ^ | 01 April 2019 | Jack Healy

Posted on 04/01/2019 5:55:15 PM PDT by Theoria

Kathy Gonzalez knows that many people across the cornfields and cattle ranches of eastern Nebraska believe she is a murderer. It doesn’t change the fact that they owe her millions of dollars.

Ms. Gonzalez was one of six innocent people who collectively spent 77 years in prison for the murder of a 68-year-old woman named Helen Wilson, whose death haunted this rural county for decades. Now, years after DNA evidence exonerated the defendants, they are about to collect a $28 million civil rights judgment against Gage County, which prosecuted them based on false confessions.

But because the county has limited financial resources and a dwindling population, nearly all of its 22,000 residents must foot the bill by paying hundreds or thousands of dollars in higher property taxes. County leaders have pleaded for help from state lawmakers, and even flirted with declaring bankruptcy.

“Do I think it’s fair these people are going to have to pay us off?” Ms. Gonzalez asked. “No. But it wasn’t fair what they did to us, either.”

The $28 million jury award is one of the largest judgments ever levied against such a small place, say experts who study wrongful convictions. It has stirred resentment in the coffee shops and bars of Beatrice, a small town where suspicions about the defendants — known as the Beatrice Six — still linger like an oil stain on the road.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; US: Nebraska
KEYWORDS: beatricesix; conviction; dna; gagecounty; helenwilson; kathygonzalez; lookwhohatescops; nebraska; reparations; rural
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To: Big Red Clay

Thanks for the local background and info. Hell is being a innocent man in prison. .Gov is very good at messing up peoples lives.


61 posted on 04/01/2019 8:59:21 PM PDT by Theoria (I should never have surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive)
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To: Spacetrucker

“You are in most rare form tonight, L.”

Yeah, I am. Feels pretty good.

Enjoy your evening.

L


62 posted on 04/01/2019 9:08:06 PM PDT by Lurker (Peaceful coexistence with the Left is not possible. Stop pretending it is.)
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To: Husker24
They can always move away.

"This case happened in the early 80s, many people werent born yet or didn’t live in the county at the time."

If that costs them money, too bad. The victims' lives were wrecked.

63 posted on 04/01/2019 9:42:16 PM PDT by Thud
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To: Husker24

“This case happened in the early 80s, many people werent born yet or didn’t live in the county at the time.”

i guess that means they’re not responsible for any long term bond debt incurred before they were born or moved into the county either, right?


64 posted on 04/01/2019 9:42:53 PM PDT by catnipman (Cat Nipman: Vote Republican in 2012 and only be called racist one more time!)
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To: Sasparilla

Give them nothing from the county. The county the murder occurred should be irrelevant. Unless this rose to the level of federal murder, murder is a state crime. The state convicted them, the state should pay.


65 posted on 04/01/2019 9:52:55 PM PDT by blueplum ("...this moment is your moment: it belongs to you... " President Donald J. Trump, Jan 20, 2017)
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To: Responsibility2nd

Well, Responsibility Never, that is completely dishonest on your part.

These people were exonerated in 1989 and the filthy corrupt municipality has spent all these decades trying to weasel out of paying restitution.

If there are people there who wanted to avoid addressing their group culpability they could have moved. And if they desired to owe a lesser sum it might have behooved them to pay up three decades ago.

Contrary to your completely disingenuous assertion, it is not just the people who were voters back in 1985 who piled on with the false conviction.

I know I know, its supposed to be “justice delayed is justice denied” and both the citizens there and you yourself are trying to force that to be true.


66 posted on 04/01/2019 9:55:38 PM PDT by MrEdd (Caveat Emptor)
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To: Flaming Conservative
There are no innocent residents here.

The residents here have kept putting people in office who kept (futilely) retrying the case for over a decade after these people were exonerated. No innocent citizen would do that.

67 posted on 04/01/2019 10:01:15 PM PDT by MrEdd (Caveat Emptor)
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To: LostInBayport

“Perhaps this case will serve as a cautionary tale to other cities and towns. That no-knock warrant might stand a better chance of getting denied, or that prosecutor with the attitude of “just get a conviction” will rethink that mindset if the risk of municipal bankruptcy is present. “

This kind of crap happens in big cities (that are effectively self insured) quite often; the difference is that they can write the big check, raise taxes with a bigger tax base, raise money with bonds (kicking the can down the road), and so forth.

http://apps.chicagotribune.com/bond-debt/chicago-bonds.html

Note the word “billion” is used in this article. And, this article is six years old. And, there is really no limit to how much debt can be taken on (without direct taxpayer approval), except possibly some limit to the stupidity of the bondholders!

If this happened in Chicago, that would be about $12.00 per resident-easily swept under the rug. Unfortunately, this makes big cities much more reckless, and they have legal departments that can make it hard for even the grandchildren of awarded victims to ever see a dime.


68 posted on 04/01/2019 10:15:56 PM PDT by The Antiyuppie ("When small men cast long shadows, then it is very late in the day.”)
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To: blueplum
The elected Gage County prosecutor (called a District Attorney in most places) convicted them, not the Nebraska Attorney General. Sometimes a state Attorney General's office (usually called the name-of-state Justice Department) takes over a local prosecution but that is rare, and did not happen here.

Legal and moral responsibility lies upon Gage County. That is normally how this sort of thing works. McClennan County in Texas is in a comparable world of hurt from the hundred plus Waco mass false arrests and prosecutions arising from the Twin Peaks biker shootout.

Some years ago, the City of Houston in Texas paid a staggering amount for the mass false arrests of most of the evening customers of a Walmart, and ALL of the customers at White Castle burger place, when an idiot police captain decided to arrest everyone in the vicinity of a purported illegal street racing event. Which included everyone in the parking lot a nearby shopping center.

69 posted on 04/01/2019 10:30:20 PM PDT by Thud
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To: Lurker

Perhaps the county will raise property taxes. In which case their federal deduction will increase thus increasing the federal deficit.debt from where it would have been. We are all paying for it. That’s the system we live in.


70 posted on 04/01/2019 10:55:15 PM PDT by ARW
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To: Responsibility2nd
This crime happened in 1985. If anyone is at all financially liable it would be anyone still alive who lived in that county in 1985. Certainly not the current residents. What these people are looking for is called reparations. Certainly the current county residents are in no way responsible for what happened nearly 30 years ago

They are responsible for electing the people who fought the settlement for all those years. Maybe paying it off sooner when the wrongly convicted victims were young and could have built a life with the settlement money would have been the right and just thing to do. And, the ones doing the paying would have been the ones responsible.

With 22,000 residents the settlement amounts to about $1300 per head.

I will give you a choice -- you can unfairly pay $1300 to atone for the sins of your fathers or you can unfairly go to prison for 21 years. Neither one is really fair, but if those are the one two choices available I will take the $1300 in a heartbeat.

71 posted on 04/01/2019 11:38:14 PM PDT by CurlyDave
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To: Thud

I’d still argue to throw it on the state’s plate. I’d argue that a County is a subsidiary of The State and The State is responsible for oversight and review of any major convictions won by any elected or appointed prosecutor in its subsidiary counties. And The State is wimping out and abdicating its authority by not actively exercising oversight and sharing responsibility. Otherwise, why even have a state - just have a bunch of autonomous counties who will refuse to prosecute any crime because of the hazards of a forensic breakthrough that hasn’t been invented yet (like DNA 30 years ago).


72 posted on 04/01/2019 11:49:57 PM PDT by blueplum ("...this moment is your moment: it belongs to you... " President Donald J. Trump, Jan 20, 2017)
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To: MrEdd; Lurker

Another point that you and others forget to consider is the ridiculous $28 million judgment this town is fighting. A bunch of do gooders like yourself essentially decided to give away free money to these victims. Read the article again. This amount is absurd and ridiculous.

Naturally the citizens of that small county are fighting against it. Wouldn’t you? Of course you would.


73 posted on 04/02/2019 2:19:16 AM PDT by Responsibility2nd ( Import the third world and you'll become the third world.)
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To: Responsibility2nd

There is no free money here.
There is amends, and amends have to hurt enough to make bad people change their behavior.

No, I haven’t forgotten anything.
Unlike you, I believe people doing bad things have to be made to stop.

The judgement here is correct.

Unlike you in every way, the judge and the other readers here believe that the behavior of the municipality in trying to keep these people incarcerated after they were exonerated has to raise the amends awarded exponentially so that the idiot voters in other places don’t do the same crap.

Your desire to have an authoritarian Government which an do whatever it wants to whomever it wants and never have to make things right afterwards no matter what the evidence is not a shared desire, ResponsibilityNever.

No, doing bad things doesn’t become okay if you do them as a mob - which is in all.ways exactly what you are asserting.


74 posted on 04/02/2019 4:52:01 AM PDT by MrEdd (Caveat Emptor)
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To: Theoria
A publication that did much to help j*seph st*lin starve out the Ukraine is finger-pointing.

Neeeeeext!

75 posted on 04/02/2019 5:03:11 AM PDT by Mmmike
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To: MrEdd

Bad people? Please see the posts on this thread by Husker24 and Big Red Clay.

You might consider these innocent FReepers as bad people. I do not.

Again I invite you to read the article. Even the victim does not think this outrageous and ridiculous judgment is fair.


76 posted on 04/02/2019 5:04:53 AM PDT by Responsibility2nd ( Import the third world and you'll become the third world.)
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To: Responsibility2nd

“Naturally the citizens of that small county are fighting against it. Wouldn’t you?”

About 15 years ago some drunken moron on a motorcycle decided to flee from the local cops while riding on a motorcycle. Predictably he crashed. His spine was broken and he was permanently paralyzed from the waist down.

He sued my town and won a $6,000,000 judgment. That case was far more egregious than this one. That clown brought his misfortune upon himself. These people didn’t.

So I’ll ask again. Exactly what changes to the system are rattling around inside your pointed little head?

Be specific.

L


77 posted on 04/02/2019 5:44:48 AM PDT by Lurker (Peaceful coexistence with the Left is not possible. Stop pretending it is.)
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To: Theoria

If the judge, prosecutor and anyone else who is responsible for this is still alive I’d say that pitchforks and torches would be called for.

Prosecutor misconduct seems to be a growing problem that needs to be harshly discouraged.


78 posted on 04/02/2019 6:07:21 AM PDT by READINABLUESTATE (Sharia law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution - Judge Jeanie Pirro)
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To: Theoria

All the Public Employees and Public Servants involved in this case should bear the first strike and be Immediately Liquidated Permanently


79 posted on 04/02/2019 6:30:43 AM PDT by eyeamok
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To: The Antiyuppie
If this happened in Chicago, that would be about $12.00 per resident-easily swept under the rug. Unfortunately, this makes big cities much more reckless, and they have legal departments that can make it hard for even the grandchildren of awarded victims to ever see a dime.

I can add this to my very long list of why I never want to live in a city!

Hopefully the legal department in this county doesn't have the resources to delay or deny these people their damages.
80 posted on 04/02/2019 7:20:57 AM PDT by LostInBayport (When there are more people riding in the cart than there are pulling it, the cart stops moving...)
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