Here are a few of the biggest payouts to innocent people!
9 - Frederick Clay After maintaining his innocence for nearly
four decades, Frederick Clay was freed from prison in August 2017.
The city of Boston paid him $3.1 Million for his wrongful conviction.
In 1979, Clay was arrested for the murder of a cab driver in Roslindale.
The incident took place weeks after his 16th birthday, so he was considered an adult in
the eyes of the law.
His eventual conviction hinged primarily on the testimony of a witness named Richard Dwyer.
There was just one problem with Dwyer's account of that fateful night: he had only identified
Clay as the culprit after being hypnotized by the police.
This technique has been thoroughly debunked in recent years.
Nevertheless, it was enough for a jury to find Clay guilty, and he spent the next 38
years of his life in prison.
With the help of the Massachusetts Innocence Program, Clay was able to get the Suffolk
County district attorney's office to review his case.
They determined that Clay had not been given a fair trial, and his conviction was vacated.
The now-53-year-old Clay was compensated with a million dollars from the state of Massachusetts.
He was also awarded $3.1 million from Boston city officials.
That's good money, and Clay no doubt accepted it with open arms.
But is $4 million enough to make up for 40 years of wrongful imprisonment?
8 - Juan Rivera After being convicted three times for a crime
he didn't commit, Juan Rivera was finally exonerated in 2011.
He later settled with the city of Waukegan, Illinois, for $20 million.
The crime that stole 20 prime years from an innocent man took place in 1992.
An 11-year old babysitter was found dead in Waukegan one summer night.
It wasn't until a month later that Juan Rivera's 20-year nightmare officially began.
The police received a tip that Rivera knew the identity of the culprit.
He was brought in for an interview with investigators.
He was charming and cooperative with the police, but something didn't add up with his testimony.
He claimed to have been at a house party not far from the scene of the crime, where he
witnessed someone acting suspiciously.
After doing some digging, the police discovered that the party Rivera described never took
place.
The focus of the investigation shifted to Rivera.
After being questioned for hours, Rivera eventually confessed, a confession he would later claim
was coerced by officers who wanted to pin the crime on him by any means necessary.
Rivera got sucker-punched with a first-degree murder charge in 1993.
5 years later, his conviction was overturned for the first time.
During his retrial, the prosecution relied heavily on the testimony of an 8-year old
girl present when the crime occurred.
Even though she was just 2-years old at the time, the jury found her identification of
Rivera as the culprit compelling enough to sentence the man to another life sentence.
In 2004, re-examined DNA evidence showed that it was scientifically impossible for Rivera
to be responsible for the murder.
His conviction was vacated once again, but prosecutors still pursued a retrial.
Even in the face of indisputable DNA tests that cleared Rivera of any wrongdoing, he
was somehow found guilty for a third time.
He began yet another life sentence.
His dreams of being a free man were shattered.
The appellate court finally overturned his conviction for a third and final time in 2011,
and after suing the city of Waukegan, Rivera got his hands on $20 million in settlement
money.
After his release, Rivera earned his barber's license and opened up his very own barber
college in Rogers Park, Illinois.
7 - Frank O'Connell Frank O'Connell settled with Los Angeles County
for $15 million after he was wrongfully imprisoned for 27 years.
O'Connell's initial conviction came in 1985.
He was blamed for the fatal shooting of a man at an apartment complex in South Pasadena.
He had dated the victim's ex-wife, Jeanne Lyon, which immediately made him a person
of interest.
If that wasn't enough, witnesses at the scene described the perpetrator as being a tall,
white male with blonde hair.
O'Connell matched this description perfectly, and he was positively identified by the prosecution's
star witness, who lived in the complex where the crime had taken place.
O'Connell was convicted and given a life sentence.
He served 27 years of that sentence before he was exonerated of the crime with the help
of Centurion Ministries, a nonprofit that works directly with wrongfully convicted inmates.
During the original trial, police had reportedly withheld evidence that would have cleared
O'Connell of the charges he was facing.
Once that evidence came to light, he was finally set free after nearly three decades.
O'Connell now works as a mechanic in Colorado.
Since his release, he has spent much of his time attempting to repair his relationship
with his son, who was only 4-years old when his dad was sent away to prison for a crime
he didn't commit.
6 - Craig Coley After serving nearly four decades in prison
for the murder of his ex-girlfriend and her son, Craig Coley was exonerated in 2017 and
granted $21 million by Simi Valley, California.
Coley was a veteran of the US Navy, having been deployed multiple times during the Vietnam
War.
In 1978, he was arrested after his ex-girlfriend and her son were found dead in their apartment.
Coley had broken up with the victim not long before her demise, which instantly made him
a possible suspect in the eyes of the police.
A neighbor's testimony was the final nail in the coffin.
They claimed to see Coley in his truck outside the victim's home that fateful night.
He was arrested the following day and immediately charged with the crime.
Although his first trial resulted in a hung jury, he was convicted the second time around
and found himself on the receiving end of a life sentence.
Coley's eventual savior came in the form of new advancements in DNA testing.
Back when he was convicted, the technology that ultimately freed him didn't exist.
In 2017, newly discovered DNA evidence led to Coley's pardon by California governor Jerry
Brown.
New tests showed that Coley's DNA was nowhere to be found on the pieces of evidence originally
used to convict him.
Coley was 70 years old at the time of his release.
He settled with the city of Simi Valley for $21 million in 2019.
The 39 years he spent behind bars is the longest prison term in California for someone whose
conviction was eventually vacated.
It's the 14th-longest wrongful prison term across the entire United States.
5 - Chester Hollman III Chester Hollman III spent 28 years of his
life in prison and got $9.8 million for it after finally attaining freedom.
In 1991, a man was mugged and shot to death by two robbers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The victim's friend told police that one of the culprits wore red shorts, while the other
one was in a blue hoodie.
Philly police's investigation ultimately led them to Chester Hollman III, even though he
was wearing green pants and didn't fit the description at all.
Nevertheless, the cops brought Hollman to the crime scene, where he was positively identified
by a homeless man with a history of drug use and mental illness.
The police used 8 eyewitnesses to piece together what happened that night, and the homeless
man was the only one that recognized Hollman as the man who committed the crime.
Police were also pointed in Hollman's direction by a woman named Deirdre Jones, who had been
with Hollman on the night of the incident and falsely claimed he was the one who shot
the victim.
With the testimonies of Jones and the homeless man serving as the prosecution's primary ammunition,
Hollman was brought to trial in April of 1993 and was convicted of second-degree murder
and robbery.
After rotting away in jail for nearly three decades, his case was finally re-examined
after one of the key witnesses retracted their incriminating statements.
He settled with Philadelphia for just under $10 million after being freed from prison
at the age of 49.
4 - Mark Shand $27 million was awarded to a Massachusetts
resident who was wrongfully locked away for nearly 30 years.
Mark Shand was convicted of murder in 1987 following a fatal shooting in a Springfield
nightclub.
His wife, Mia, testified that she'd been with her husband on the night of the incident.
Still, an eyewitness claimed to have seen Shand at the club that night, and he was found
guilty.
Shand, an innocent man, languished in prison for 27 years.
In 2013, he was finally granted a new trial after the primary witness from the original
trial admitted to falsely identifying Shand as the shooter.
He was exonerated of the murder charge and given his rightful freedom.
Even though he was finally back in the outside world, Shand said his wrongful conviction
had a lasting impact on his life.
It was still causing him problems even after his exoneration.
He was turned away from jobs that discovered his conviction while conducting background
checks, and he was forced to get a minimum wage position to pay for his family's living
expenses.
The Shands' bank account got a major boost when a jury ruled that Mark should be given
a million dollars for each year he wasted away in his jail cell.
In 2019, his $27 million prize officially arrived, and while it certainly helped pay
the bills, nothing could properly reimburse the three decades he had already lost for
good.
3 - Thaddeus "T.J."
Jimenez Thaddeus "TJ" Jimenez was awarded a certificate
of innocence and $25 million after being wrongfully convicted of murder.
However, not long after his pardon, he found himself right back in prison for crimes he
actually committed.
His first conviction came in October of 1994.
Despite being just 13-years old at the time, Jimenez was found guilty of fatally shooting
a teenager in front of a Honey Baked Ham store in Chicago.
An eyewitness who watched the murder from across the street identified Jimenez as the
guilty party.
Even though the police had a tape-recorded confession by the actual culprit, Juan Carlos
Torres, Jimenez was convicted, as the recording was withheld during the criminal trial.
Jimenez got a 50-year sentence, which was reversed a couple years later.
He was granted a retrial but once again got blamed for the crime.
It wasn't until 2007 that he got his freedom.
The witnesses that placed Jimenez at the scene all recanted their original testimonies, and
in 2009, the innocent man was free at last.
After filing a lawsuit against the city of Chicago, Jimenez was given $25 million in
restitution.
But by that time, he was already facing brand new drug charges stemming from his new gang
ties.
He was sentenced to another year in prison, but this time, he actually deserved it.
In 2015, he was arrested yet again after shooting a former member of his gang.
He pleaded guilty to the crime in 2016 and got 9 more years behind bars.
In a twist of irony, the guy shot by Jimenez won a $6 million judgment against the former
wrongful conviction poster child.
2 - Central Park 5 After their widely publicized convictions
that they had nothing to do with, five New York City teenagers, better known as the Central
Park 5, reached a settlement agreement with their hometown for $41 million.
The five wrongfully convicted teens were Korey Wise, Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Antron
McCray, and Raymond Santana.
There were several attacks in Central Park on the night of the incident that sent those
five innocent boys to prison.
On April 19th of 1989, the park was overrun by a gang of roughly 30 teenagers described
as a "wolf pack."
It wasn't just the jogger, Trisha Meili, who fell victim to this predatory pack of adolescents.
A couple on a tandem bike, a cab driver, a man carrying groceries, and a male jogger
also faced beatings at the hands of the gang, but Meili's assault sticks out from the rest
because she was also taken advantage of by her attackers.
While the police didn't have any hard-and-fast evidence to pin the crime on the Central Park
5, they took the fall anyway.
After hours of interrogation, they were coerced into confessions they would later recant.
They were painted as the bad guys in the mainstream media before a conviction was even made.
The Central Park 5 had already been convicted in the court of public opinion.
Their prison terms ranged between 5 and 15 years.
Four of them ended up serving 6-7 years, while the eldest of the group, Korey Wise, spent
a total of 13 years in jail.
In 2002, the actual perpetrator of the crime finally confessed while serving time for a
separate offense.
The Central Park 5 all had their convictions vacated, and after suing the city of New York,
they were awarded $41 million.
While most of the wrongfully convicted teens went on to lead normal lives following their
release, Raymond Santana found himself back behind bars in short order.
He eventually cleaned up his act and started working with the Innocence Project, trying
to clear the names of innocent folks facing jail time, as he did all those years ago.
1 - The McCollum Brothers In September of 2014, half-brothers Henry
McCollum and Leon Brown were released from the North Carolina prison.
They'd spent the previous three decades locked up for a crime they didn't commit.
A few years later, they were awarded a staggering sum of $75 million for their troubles, the
largest such payout in US history.
McCollum and Brown were 19 and 15 years old in 1983 when they were wrongfully convicted
and sent to death row.
They were convicted for heinous crimes against an 11-year-old girl in Red Springs, North
Carolina.
The victim had been taken advantage of before her death, and the two boys were arrested
the following day.
The police didn't find any concrete evidence at the scene that linked the teenagers to
the crime.
Their pursuit of the brothers was founded on baseless rumors spread by one of the boys'
classmates.
After hours of relentless interrogation without any lawyers present, McCollum and Brown were
forced to sign confessions that were pre-written by the police.
Both boys suffered from cognitive disabilities that made it difficult for them to read and
write, so it's safe to say they had no idea what they agreed to.
After 30 agonizing years behind bars, a glimmer of hope emerged for the brothers in 2014.
At the behest of the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, newly discovered DNA evidence
from the crime scene was examined.
The test results confirmed what the two men insisted all along: they were innocent.
The evidence implicated Roscoe Artis, a convicted felon who was already serving a life sentence
for a completely different crime.
Once McCollum and Brown were finally granted their due freedom, they were given a pretty
hefty check along with it.
$31 million was awarded to each of them, a million for every year they spent in prison.
They were given an additional $13 million in punitive damages, with the record-breaking
settlement totaling $75 million.
Since their release, they've tried to make it crystal clear that other innocent people
just like them are still locked up for crimes they didn't commit.
The brothers' attorney used their liberation as an opportunity to abolish the death penalty,
which he says would put an end to the execution of innocent individuals like McCollum and
Brown.
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