Wrongfully Imprisoned Man To Be Charged For "Food And Lodging"
 

7,000 Pounds Worth


This is so unreal and absurd I can't even comprehend it.

If this is true, they should be asking for the money from the lady you falsely accused him of rape. He was in jail because of her actions, not his.

I agree!

It actually sounds sort of fair. If they give him compensation they will take out the room and boarding.

Why should he have to pay for room and boarding when he wasn't even supposed to have been imprisoned in the first place? That's three years of his life he can never get back, not to mention all the difficulties and trauma that come both with being an innocent person imprisoned and how it's going to affect his post-prison life.

You don't see the other inmates getting charged room and board. Should we then start hitting all the other prisoners with room and board fees too?

Absolutely.

Why should he be allowed to sue because the system found him guilty? They have already agreed to give him compensation. In fact.


So 7,000 minus from that is still 93,000, what's the problem here?

Until reading, I assumed it was in Texas.

It's not the total sum that matters. In no way does he deserve to get 7 large taken from him.

I would still argue that he shouldn't be charged room and board in this instance, but I could see the logic more clearly.

I do have a problem with the idea of charging all inmates room and board, though. It saddles them with debt when they get out on top of the employability problems that come with being a convicted felon. This debt could ultimately lead to higher rates of repeat offenses.

Besides, technically they're already paying room and board when they do prison jobs at less than minimum wage, etc.

I don't really see a problem with this. Its just a factor in the calculation of what he's owed. I mean, its absurd to suggest that you can be compensated for something like this, but once you accept that principle you may as well do it right.

Because he does have a point in that he, an innocent party, is being charged for room and board while the guilty inmates essentially are getting it free. Furthermore, even if the inmates are paying for it by the work they do (assuming inmates work in British prisons--I don't know anything about the English penal system), if he did the same work, he's still being charged an extra 7,000 that the guilty don't have to pay.


As Shorty said, it's not the sum so much as it is the principle of the thing. The man was wrongly imprisoned. He shouldn't have to pay anything.

It's not being taken from him. They did no choose to do this till he decided to sue for compensation, because he was in jail. This is the consequence. If you ask for compensation then they will take the cost of room and boarding from the compensation, it sounds completely fair to me. I don't see why this is such a big deal. It's not like they said they were going to charge him before he requested compensation.

Why do you think it's absurd that he can be compensated?

Because you can't unbreak an egg. No matter what they do, they can't change the fact that he was wrongfully imprisoned.

It's like compensating someone for the death of a family member. Sure I'll take it, but is there really a monetary amount that life is worth?

While that's certainly true, receiving monetary compensation to make up for lost wages, promotion opportunities, any extra interest on a mortgage, etc, goes at least part of the way to correcting the wrong.

Now, the amount of compensation is another matter entirely and gets into a lot of grey areas, but I still stand to believe that he shouldn't be charged for room and board as part of the compensation settlement.

You do realize this is an accounting thing right? they could just as easily do this in the background without him even knowing the amount if being removed from the compensation.

And no matter what you do, you can't bring back a spouse killed by a drunk driver.

No matter what you do, you can't change the fact that little Timmy died from poisoned baby food.

No matter what you do, you can't change the fact that the doctor cut off your healthy leg.

That is why we have torts. You can't change the past, but you can compensate for it.

As for paying for imprisonment, several states in the U.S. have adopted pay for your stay programs. Florida is the harshest among them and has implemented some crazy schemes. Inmates have to pay unit pricing for items. That means a single aspirin costs $5 (the cost of the whole bottle). If you want another aspirin, that's another $5.

I would say that's a little different, but it depends on the type of death you're talking about. Old age, cancer, etc. are things that are unfortunate, but they happen and aren't preventable.

Murder, gross negligence in medical care, etc. are deaths that -are- preventable and fall in to the should not have happened category, hence why the American legal system allows for the possibility of suing for compensation.

Now you can argue that cancer, old age, and so on are preventable and fall into the should not have happened category, but good luck getting compensation from Fate/Chance/God/Yahweh/Allah/Imhotep/Odin/Jupiter/Zeus/Whatevernameyouwanttoputtoanyomnipotentpower.

Right, and if you're going to figure it that way its just as reasonable to figure on expenses not incurred, ie room and board.

On a purely legal basis, yes, there is.

They could have, but they didn't. And now that the fact is out in the open, it becomes a subject for debate and dispute.

I thought it was pretty obvious I was talking about wrongful death, not natural.

Expenses not incurred is one thing.


This is another. It's charging him for being roomed and boarded in the prison, which he should not have to pay.

We are fighting a losing battle. Reason doesn't factor into this discussion. :)

I wasn't sure if you were talking just about wrongful death, or if you were including natural death (i.e. life insurance) in there.

Hence my post covering both areas :)

I thought this was going to be worse when I read the subject line.

He's not "paying" anything. Not a cent. If he thinks he's entitled to more compensation, fine, I can understand that. But he's not getting a bill.

I realize what happened to him sucks. But unfortunately, the ONLY way to guarantee a wrongful conviction rate of 0% is to convict absolutely nobody. These things do happen. There's no reason the jail shouldn't deduct "benefits" that he did receive from the (much larger) amount that a jury took away. This really isn't the jail's fault either - the fault lies with the jury and complaining victim.

There also is at another level. For example, if someone said, I'll give you $1 Million to stay in a prison for a year, I'd consider it.

That is exactly what they should have done in the first place.

I imagine this is what every other jail does - and what this one will do starting now.

I don't have a problem with the jail charging for this. I just think they're sending the bill to the wrong place.

Guess I'm not sure why there is a debate here. It's disgusting that the state would do this. They F'd up their prosecution, they can eat 7k. How much waste would they uncover if they did a 3 year audit? At least 7k, probably a hell of a lot more.

They screwed up. Give the man a decent sized settlement to make up for the fact you wrongfully stripped three years of his life away and be done with it.

You want the 7k that bad? Find the people who covered up the fact she'd repeatedly pulled this BS and take it out of their budget. (cops, prosecutors, etc.)

It's insane that they are doing this.

Does he have to pay taxes on the whole compensation? Definitely have to pay taxes so you can have courts and prisons.

I don't see anywhere that anything was "covered up". Without seeing the rest of the evidence, the jury is the only entity that screwed up here.

Should the guy be compensated? If the prosecution did something wrong (burried evidence or went after a guy they knew to be innocent) I could see compensation, but it doesn't seem right to compensate the guy for the jury getting it wrong. Or maybe the better way to say it is that it makes sense for him to get compensation, but I can't see where anyone should be responsible for providing that compensation.

You don't normally pay taxes on money awarded in court. (In the USA).

Juries can do everything exactly right and the result can still be a wrongful conviction. I think it is pretty odd to scapegoat a jury in these cases.

And while it's true that a convict receives "free room and board," it's not like they can get gainful employment while they are in prison. So, to me, it's a bit strange to say you have to pay for your room and board (subtracted from compensation for wrongful imprisonment) when a prisoner has no other means of paying for their room and board. Even if a prisoner is independently wealthy, they can't pay for their own food and rooming (except under that new weird California bill). So, in addition to the many freedoms, this prisoner was wrongfully denied, he was denied the chance to make a living, choose his food, and choose his board. I think billing him for that is rubbing salt in the wound.

So can prosecutors. And of course, prosecutors have a much lower standard of proof in terms of what's required to take someone to trial v. what's supposed to be required for a jury to find someone guilty.

All that goes out the window when there's misconduct obviously, but I haven't seen any mention that that happened here. Even liars can be sexually assaulted.