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Judi Lynn

(160,450 posts) Fri Oct 23, 2015, 04:12 PM Oct 2015

Oklahoma to pay $8 million to man wrongfully imprisoned for 16 years

Source: Reuters

Oklahoma to pay $8 million to man wrongfully imprisoned for 16 years

Reuters
By Heide Brandes
2 hours ago

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - The city of Tulsa has agreed to pay $8 million to a man wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for 16 years after his lawyers accused police and a crime lab of covering up evidence that exonerated him, authorities said on Friday.

Sedrick Courtney, 42, was sentenced to 60 years in prison after he was convicted in 1996 of robbing and beating a couple.

Courtney had produced witnesses who testified that he was not at the crime scene. But a victim of the robbery, whose eyes had been covered up with duct tape, identified him as one of her masked assailants based on his voice.

Key to Courtney's conviction were hairs that Tulsa police said were found on a ski mask one of the robbers wore. His lawyers said a forensic investigator's official finding, that hair from the mask came from Courtney, was fabricated. But when they tried to examine the evidence, they were told by Tulsa officials that it had been destroyed, court papers showed.
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Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/oklahoma-pay-8-million-man-wrongfully-imprisoned-16-172433683.html

4 replies

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Oklahoma to pay $8 million to man wrongfully imprisoned for 16 years (Original Post) Judi Lynn Oct 2015 OP

Yawn.... Another case where the government (local/state/federal) is caught with pants down, erronis Oct 2015 #1

Kick and R BeanMusical Oct 2015 #2

It's part of a compensation, but it's not enough DFW Oct 2015 #3

K & R. appalachiablue Oct 2015 #4

erronis

(15,181 posts)

1. Yawn.... Another case where the government (local/state/federal) is caught with pants down,

Reply to Judi Lynn (Original post)

Fri Oct 23, 2015, 04:20 PM

Oct 2015

And the taxpayer pays the bill.

Please - put any future payroll or pensions or corporate shenanigan payments into a lockdown like the IRS does to the poor wage earners.

Please - hold every person in the chain of command responsible, financially and legally, responsible for doing harm. Not even malfeasance which seems to take too much effort for courts, but just harming other individuals. If you are hired as a $40-60K cop or a $100-250K legal beagle, you should be prepared to have your paybacks.

As it is now, the operating entity of the government just passes the bill to the poor people and the republican slobs who couldn't care (they don't pay taxes.)

BeanMusical

(4,389 posts)

2. Kick and R

Reply to Judi Lynn (Original post)

Fri Oct 23, 2015, 04:21 PM

Oct 2015

DFW

(54,291 posts)

3. It's part of a compensation, but it's not enough

Reply to Judi Lynn (Original post)

Fri Oct 23, 2015, 04:28 PM

Oct 2015

Anyone taking part in a deliberate false conviction like that should get an automatic sentence equal to the time served by the victim. ALL of them. Cops, DA, lab workers, all of them who knew they were helping send an innocent man to prison, robbing him of sixteen years of his life.

The law should make it REALLY unattractive to participate in such an ugly action.

appalachiablue

(41,103 posts)

4. K & R.

Reply to Judi Lynn (Original post)

Fri Oct 23, 2015, 11:15 PM

Oct 2015

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