Man Imprisoned For 417 Days Past Release Date Compensated By State

The Wisconsin Claims Board awarded $7,600 to a man who spent more than a year in the Dane County jail beyond his mandatory release date on Tuesday.

The board agreed with Robin Gavinski’s claim that the 417 extra days he was locked up from June 2011 to August of 2012 were the result of an error made by the Department of Corrections (DOC). A records clerk computed his sentence as consecutive instead of concurrent for one of the three charges for which he was serving time. Gavinski told the board he shouldn’t be held responsible for miscalculating his own sentence.

“I’ve always fessed up to my actions, whether they were good or bad,” said Gavinski. “The same rules should apply to the Department of Corrections. We’re dealing with an outdated system to make sure offenders are doing the correct amount of time. Offenders do not question the system or their ability to compute the judgment of conviction. I feel the Department of Corrections should be held at a higher standard.”

Gavinski had asked for more than $60,000 in compensation, but the board decided $7,600 was equitable. The DOC released a statement accepting the board’s ruling. It also claimed such mistakes are rare and that since Gavinski’s case, a new system has been put in place to prevent similar errors in the future.

The board also granted $25,000 on Tuesday to Joseph Frey under the state’s wrongful conviction statute. Frey was released from prison last summer after spending eight years in prison for a 1991 rape in Oshkosh. DNA evidence later proved he did not commit the crime. The board rejected arguments by prosecutors in the case that Frey still could have committed the rapes, despite the fact that another man’s DNA, and not Frey’s, was found at the scene of the crime.