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 ...
Thanks for the local background and info. Hell is being a innocent man in prison. .Gov is very good at messing up peoples lives.
“You are in most rare form tonight, L.”
Yeah, I am. Feels pretty good.
Enjoy your evening.
L
"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.
“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?
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
Neeeeeext!
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.
“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
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.
All the Public Employees and Public Servants involved in this case should bear the first strike and be Immediately Liquidated Permanently
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