Exonerated man gets no compensation after spending 23 years in prison
Lamonte McIntyre was exonerated after spending time in prison for a crime he didn't commit, but the state isn't going to give him any compensation.
A Kansas man has been exonerated after spending 23 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, but the state isn’t going to give him any compensation for the time he spent behind bars.
Lamonte McIntyre was handed two life sentences for the 1994 murders of Doniel Quinn and Donald Ewing. He was only 17 at the time, and as KSHB reported, his defense team insisted that he was arrested because of a crooked cop and sloppy police work, but he was convicted anyway.
On Oct. 15, McIntyre was finally released from prison after spending his entire time there insisting that he was innocent. When forensic evidence officials did finally get around to looking at the evidence against him, they had dropped the case in just two days, surprising McIntyre and granting him his freedom.
“I wasn’t expecting that,” McIntyre told the news station. “I figured it was coming soon because the truth is what the truth is.”
However, despite spending over half his life wrongfully imprisoned, the state of Kansas will not give McIntyre any compensation, because it is one of 18 states in the nation that does not give payouts to those who are wrongfully convicted and then later exonerated.
Had he been released on parole, Kansas would have helped him pursue an education, get an ID, and find housing assistance, but the state is not required to do any of those things for someone who is exonerated.
For now, McIntyre, who was trained as a barber, is relying on a fund-raising site so that he can get certified and look toward his free future.
