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| WISCONSIN CRITICIZED FOR PAYMENT AMOUNTS TO WRONGFULLY-CONVICTED |
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WPR News - Wisconsin criticized for payment amounts to wrongfully-convicted
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Friday March 02, 2012
by Gilman Halsted
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(UNDATED) A man who served time in prison for a crime he didn't commit is asking state legislators to pass a bill boosting the compensation Wisconsin offers to people who have been wrongfully convicted.
Wisconsin currently offers someone who was wrongfully convicted $5,000 for each year they spent in prison. That's the lowest amount granted by any of the 27 states in the country that have such compensation laws. Fred Saecker spent seven and half years in prison for two brutal rapes he didn't commit. He says when he was released he suffered from severe post traumatic stress disorder, "I was afraid to go practically across the street, I was afraid to go to grocery stores any public place. I was even suicidal for a time and when I did go apply for work it was hard to explain that you're missing seven years out of your life. So those first few interviews I did go to didn't go very well."
Saecker was freed in 1997 and can't benefit from the bill he testified in support of. It would grant people who were exonerated beginning in 2006, $50,000 for each year of wrongful imprisonment plus eligibility for state health insurance and housing and employment assistance from the Department of Corrections. Keith Findley of the Wisconsin Innocence project says under current law that's help exonerees can't get, "The sad truth is that in Wisconsin today a guilty person released from prison on parole or extended supervision gets more support from the state than does an actually innocent person wrongfully convicted freed from prison upon discovery of their innocence."
The bill to change that situation probably won't make it to the floor of the legislature before this session ends. But supporters predict it will win approval next year.
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