Legislation would allow compensation for wrongfully convicted
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LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Ken Wyniemko spent nearly nine years in prison for a rape he didn’t commit. The Rochester Hills man says people wrongfully convicted and put behind bars should be compensated for the time they were denied freedom. He supports legislation pending in the state House that would allow the exonerated to sue the state for at least $50,000 for each year they spent locked up. The amount of compensation could go higher depending on the amount of lost wages and other costs associated with the imprisonment. The bill also would provide the wrongfully convicted with up to 10 years of physical and mental health care through the state employee system. Wyniemko, 56, received a $3.7 million settlement from Macomb County’s Clinton Township and police after being released from prison in 2003. He was set free after a DNA test cleared him of raping a Clinton Township woman. He says the legislation, along with other proposals aimed at expanding the uses of DNA evidence, are needed to provide some sense of justice after an injustice has been done. “No person in this country, and especially in this great state, should have to suffer like I did or like my family did,” says Wyniemko, a former bowling alley manager who now works through a nonprofit foundation to make sure others who have been wrongfully convicted are exonerated. “My goal is to try and reform the system as best as I can to ensure that what happened to me doesn’t happen to anyone else,” he says. Wyniemko was convicted in 1994 even though he steadfastly maintained he was innocent. He says the conviction came about in part because of false testimony from a jailhouse informant seeking a lighter sentence, and witness misidentification. Wyniemko missed his father’s funeral in 2000 because he was behind bars. He missed the birth of two grandchildren. The Innocence Project, based in New York, says that 22 other states have laws to compensate the wrongfully convicted. The organization says the laws are needed because people who lost years due to a wrongful conviction often have no money, housing or health care when they are finally exonerated. But Attorney General Mike Cox sees drawbacks to the bill. He says it could force the state to pay out large sums of money even though the wrongful convictions were the fault of other agencies or departments. Most people are sent to prison through charges pursued by local prosecutors in county courts. |