Michigan Does Not Have Enough Money To Pay Wrongfully Convicted
How many times is the state of Michigan going to screw these people over?
Let me count the ways.
The Detroit News is reporting that people who have been wrongfully convicted of a crime by our state and local prosecutors are not being compensated for their time in prison as our laws states they should be.
Why?
Because low and behold we do not have enough money in the fund to do so.
Back in 2016 the Michigan legislature passed the Wrongful Imprisonment Compensation Act, that Bill was supposed to pay eligible wrongly convicted prisoners $50,000 a year for each year they spent in prison.
State officials are now saying they do not have enough money in the fund to pay these exonerated ex-prisoners.
Really, you have enough money to pay for plenty of other things that government should not be sticking their noses in but for men and women who spent time in prison because our prosecutors screwed up they do not.
According to the spokeswoman for Michigan’s Attorney General Dana Nessel, the AG is:
working closely with her team to move forward as quickly as possible in evaluating these cases...However, she is deeply concerned about the level of funding available...The current balance in the fund is so low that a single case or two could deplete it...We cannot and should not lead people to believe they will be compensated for their wrongful incarceration if we are unwilling to appropriate the necessary funds.
Then we have Ron Leix, the Michigan Department of Treasury spokesman who according to the Detroit News said last week that the exoneration fund had only $1.6 million in it; that was less than the amount owed to just ONE wrongfully convicted murderer, one Richard Phillips.
Did you know that Richard Phillips spent 46 years in prison before his case was overturned? According to the Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigan, Mr. Phillips was the longest-serving wrongfully convicted inmate in U.S. history.
We hear and see all of the spending the state of Michigan does and they cannot even come up with the money to pay for the people the state puts in their prisons wrongfully.
Where are our priorities?
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