D.C. to pay Tennessee man $16.65 million over wrongful conviction
Donald Gates spent over 25 years in prison before being acquitted of sexual assault and murder in 2009.
Donald Gates spent over 25 years in prison before being acquitted of sexual assault and murder in 2009.
A man who spent 27 years behind bars for crimes he did not commit will receive $16.65 million from the District of Columbia as compensation for his wrongful imprisonment.
That鈥檚 about $617,000 for every year he spent in prison.
Donald Eugene Gates, now 64, was convicted in 1982 of the rape and first-degree murder of 21-year-old Georgetown University student Catherine Schilling.
Mr. Gates was exonerated in 2009 after DNA evidence revealed he was not connected to the crime, and a temporary janitor at the building where Schilling worked聽was behind the murder. The janitor died a year before he was identified.
In 2010, Gates鈥檚 lawyers filed a civil lawsuit against the city and police alleging police misconduct.
Gates, who now lives in聽Tennessee, has already received more than $1 million from the federal government for its role in his conviction. The settlement with the city brings his total compensation to $18 million, the Associated Press reports.
On Wednesday, a federal jury found that two D.C.聽homicide detectives fabricated at least part of a confession from an informant and withheld evidence that led to Gates鈥檚 wrongful conviction for the 1981 rape and murder, according to The Washington Post,.
As he left the courtroom, Gates told reporters: 鈥淚t feels like the God of the King James Bible is real, and he answered my prayers. Justice is on the way to being fulfilled ... It鈥檚 one of the happiest days of my life.鈥�
In the United States, laws governing compensation for wrongfully convicted people vary from state to state. 聽
Only about聽one-third聽of the wrongfully convicted are compensated, according to estimates by the Innocence Project, a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals and reforming the criminal justice system.
While some states pay a fixed amount per year of imprisonment, at least 20 provide nothing.
聽As 海角大神 previously reported,
In 2013, the National Registry of Exonerations recorded a highest number of exonerations in the United States. The Registry recorded 87 known exonerations, a third of which were in cases which no crime in fact occurred.