There’s bipartisan support for a bill in the state Assembly to award $90,000 to a man who spent 23 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. The state Senate has already approved paying him more.
Under current law, the state will only pay someone who has been wrongly convicted $5,000 a year for each year of imprisonment, capped at $25,000. The state Claims Board asked the legislature to award Robert Lee Stinson $90,000. The state Senate boosted that by another $46,000. The author of the Assembly version of the bill, Republican state Rep. Dale Kooyenga, says that could happen in the Assembly as well, but he wants to stick with the amount the Claims board approved.
“The Legislature actually has the ability to up that, but it’s really arbitrary. I mean, what do you pay someone who had the years of their life … I mean, every year is important,” Kooyenga said. “From the age of 23 to 49, that he’s in prison. It’s really remarkable, and there’s really no amount of money that we can do to fix that.”
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There are two competing bills in the Legislature right now that would boost the state’s compensation for the wrongfully convicted. One would raise it to the what the federal government pays to people who served federal time, which is $50,000 a year. The other raises it to just $15,000 a year. Neither bill is likely to get voted on this year. Stinson’s attorney, Byron Lichstein of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, says it’s important to get this individual bill passed soon.
“This money will help: it will help Mr. Stinson put his life back together,” Lichstein said. “He’s made quite a bit of progress already. But he still faces barriers that others do not, so whatever can be done will assist him.”
Of the 29 states that offer compensation to the wrongfully convicted, Wisconsin offers one of the lowest amounts.
Updated: An earlier version of the story incorrectly referred to Mr. Stinson’s first name as Harold. His full name is actually Robert Lee Stinson.
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