Partial bailout for botched Nebraska homicide case advances

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A rural Nebraska county that was ordered to pay a $28.1 million legal judgment for sending six innocent people to prison could get a $4 million bailout from the state under a bill that won initial approval from lawmakers on Thursday.

Lawmakers advanced the measure, 35-3, through the first of three required votes. Supporters initially proposed a $10 million payment over two years, but reduced it after some senators expressed reservations about that amount.

Officials in Gage County, in southeast Nebraska, have sought state help ever since a federal judge ordered them in 2018 to pay the wrongfully convicted people, known as the Beatrice Six. The $28.1 million judgment is more than three times the total annual property tax collections in the county, which has 22,000 residents. With attorney fees and interest, county residents will end up paying around $31 million on top of the cost of basic government services.

“Gage County has exhausted every financial resource available to the county and the taxpayers,” said Sen. Myron Dorn, a former Gage County supervisor who represents the area.

Gage County officials appealed the judge’s ruling but lost, and raised its property tax levy to the maximum allowed under state law to help pay the judgment.

In 2019, they also imposed a new half-cent sales tax under a new law approved by lawmakers over the objections of Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts. The sales tax has generated almost $2 million so far. Last year, Gage County settled with its former insurers for another $6 million after the companies initially denied the county’s claim.

The Beatrice Six collectively spent more than 70 years in prison for a 1985 murder in Beatrice but were exonerated by DNA evidence in 2008. The man implicated in the rape and murder of 68-year-old Helen Wilson died in an Oklahoma prison in 1992.

Reviews of the criminal case later found that local authorities — under huge pressure to get convictions — obtained confessions from five of the six defendants with the threat that they could face the death penalty.

Authorities also persuaded several of the defendants that they had repressed memories of the crime. Most struggled with mental health problems and developmental disabilities. And a Nebraska State Patrol forensic scientist who concluded that blood and semen at the scene didn’t match any of the defendants was never called to testify at trial.

Some critics have argued that Gage County has only itself to blame, but many residents have countered that they didn’t live in the area at the time and shouldn’t have to pay for the mistakes of elected officials nearly four decades ago.

Sen. Steve Erdman, of Bayard, noted that the jury that convicted the six was drawn from residents in neighboring Jefferson County. Erdman, a staunch conservative, said he was moved to support the bill after hearing from a young farmer who was being forced to pay an extra $1,400 a year in property taxes because of the judgment.

“Some of these people weren’t even born when this happened,” he said.

Erdman also argued that the state ultimately trained the law enforcement officers who botched the case.

Sen. Lou Ann Linehan, of Omaha, who grew up near Beatrice, said lawmakers should view the issue as representatives of the entire state and not just their legislative districts.

“Any one of us could be in this boat,” she said.

Sen. John Cavanaugh, of Omaha, said the case points to larger problems in a state system that he said over-incarcerates people.

“It’s created by the policies we set in place and the expectations we place on that system,” he said.

But Sen. Adam Morfeld, of Lincoln, said he was more comfortable with the smaller $4 million payout because Gage County residents shouldn’t be totally relieved of the burden because they elected the officials who bungled the case.

“I think we should help a little bit, but I think that, quite frankly, there is some responsibility to be borne by those residents,” he said.

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