A bill by Steve Bieda (Democratic Party) to provide compensation and other relief for individuals wrongfully imprisoned for crimes; to prescribe the powers and duties of certain state governmental officers and agencies; and to provide remedies.

Summary: LANSING, Mich. (WOOD) — A proposed law making its way through the state legislature would provide at least $60,000 for every year a person is found to have been wrongfully imprisoned. More: legislature.mi.gov.

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Jun 21, 2015

I don't think the federal government should provide compensation for wrongful imprisonment when it was the state's actions that imprisoned the wrong person.

It seems in some cases that the wrongful imprisonment involved officials who refused to do their jobs, refused to look at facts that didn't support their own or their community's prejudices, willfully bent laws, facts and evidence to make the suspect look guilty and in some cases even beat confessions out of people. Those cases should not only be compensated, but charges should be drawn up against the officials who didn't do their jobs.

There are cases where the evidence seems pretty clear, but ended up a wrong person at the wrong place at the wrong time, usually cleared years later by DNA evidence. I'm not entirely convinced that automatic compensation is due for these people. It sucks big time, but to have a truly impartial judiciary and jury system, we do have to allow for honest mistakes.

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Aug 7, 2015

Fair enough, but, they still had years of their lives taken from them, they missed things they can never get back, kids birthday party's, graduations, weddings, funerals, baby's first steps, first word, etc, etc, not to mention all the years of gainful employment they lost and all the money that goes with that, even if it's just an honest mistake, the fact remains that they've been robbed of potentially all of that by said mistake, and when you've mistake costs someone something you owe them some form of compensation to make things right, just like any other form of negligence.

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