A Rural County Owes $28 Million for Wrongful Convictions. It Doesn't Want to Pay.

[Eugene]

Source: New York Times

A Rural County Owes $28 Million for Wrongful Convictions. It Doesn’t Want to Pay.

By Jack Healy
April 1, 2019

BEATRICE, Neb. — 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 in 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.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/us/beatrice-six-nebraska.html

[LiberalFighter]

1. They should go after the prosecutors and law enforcement.

[SWBTATTReg]

2. These people (Gage County) should have policed themselves better, giving the highest of the ...

benefit of the doubt instead of apparently railroading these innocent victims into jail based upon false confessions. When people's lives are on the line (in jail for life, etc.), a very high standard should be set so the innocent don't get wrongly put in jail/wrongly convicted. It's better as they say, to let some guilty ones free vs. jailing the innocent ... of course we (in DU land), in a perfect world, all prefer the ones responsible for a crime to be found guilty vs. any innocents.

Also, when I read the linked article, the county clearly was involved in this up to their eyeballs in railroading these people by using FALSE confessions and fake memories. Actions like this need to be stopped in their tracks and by doing this, with this large settlement, other counties in other jurisdictions will be more careful in their vetting process, and won't let others suffer the same consequences too.

If the county leaders are still complaining about the payout, then perhaps a change in county management/leadership is required (if it hasn't happened already). The county leaders do hire those in the police department, the prosecutor's office, the county courthouse, the whole thing, so the county does bear responsibility and I don't feel sorry for them at all.