Claims board hears from Green Bay brothers who spent decades in prison for murder they didn’t commit

A state board heard directly on Friday from two Wisconsin brothers who served more than two decades in prison for a murder they didn’t commit.

David and Robert Bintz are asking for over $2 million each as compensation for their wrongful convictions.

The Wisconsin Claims Board held a hearing last week, as the five-member body prepares to make its recommendation in response to the brothers’ request for payment.

Last year, a Brown County judge vacated the bothers’ murder convictions, after they spent 24 years behind bars for the 1987 killing of 44-year-old Sandra Lison.

Now that they’ve been exonerated, the Bintzes told the claims board they’ve been struggling to adapt to life outside prison walls.

“I missed all the simple things in life that makes life beautiful,” Robert Bintz said in a statement submitted to the board. “I kept my faith for the last 25 years. Here I am as an old man, released into a world I no longer know, and I’m still adjusting.”

Robert Bintz is now 69 and David is 70.

Their attorney, Jarrett Adams, said they’re now at retirement age with no savings.

“No one wins in a case like this,” Adams said. “Both Robert and David are happy to have their life, but we have to acknowledge what their life looks like right now.”

A decades-old state law caps compensation for a wrongfully-convicted person at $25,000. But Wisconsin has the option to pay out more than that, if the payout is approved by the state Legislature.

Adams says that’s merited in the Bintzes’ case. He’s asking the Wisconsin Claims Board to make a recommendation to the Legislature at $2,159,328 in compensation per brother.

It’s not clear how soon the board might make its recommendation. State law doesn’t set a deadline.

On Friday, Adams urged the board to decide swiftly in his clients’ favor. He says both brothers are dealing with costly physical and mental health issues that were exacerbated by their time in prison.

In the petition, Adams said David Bintz has been living in transitional housing through a charitable organization called Mountains of Hope.

“We don’t know if David will still have this housing the next day,” Adams told the board. “We don’t know if David will have resources for his medical needs. … We don’t know if he will ever have (a) relationship with his daughter that he was gone from for 20-plus years.”

The Wisconsin Innocence project used DNA evidence to tie another man — William Hendricks — to Lisons’ robbery, rape and murder.

Hendricks died in 2000, the same year the Bintzes went to prison for Lison’s murder.

Although the claims board met in open session, Wisconsin Department of Administration Policy Analyst Tracy Smith declined to provide WPR with a full copy of the body’s meeting packet on Friday.

Smith said that request for documents from the open meeting would be processed as as a public request.

“The claim materials are not usually made public unless there is a specific request for those records, as they often contain sensitive and/or confidential information,” Smith wrote in an email.