Justice on the Cheap: $5,000 Plus Legal Fees For Wrongful Conviction

by Jordan Yerman | February 10, 2008 at 11:14 am

285 views | 0 Recommendations | 0 comments

Five grand seems a bit stingy for such a miscarriage of justice: loss of a year's wages would be more than $5000, and that does not take into account lost opportunity from being portrayed as a child molester. Social repercussions: immeasurable.

A man who served almost a year in prison for a crime he didn't commit has been awarded the maximum the state of Wisconsin can pay him: $5,000 plus legal fees.

The lawyer of 61-year-old David Sanders hopes the case will reopen debate about the compensation limit. A decades-old law limits it to $5,000 per year behind bars plus attorney costs.

Sanders is from Louisville, Kentucky. He was convicted in 2006 on a child-molestation charge when he was a Catholic educator in Milwaukee.

He was sentenced to 15 years, but he was freed after eight months when another man confessed.