GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - $4.4M in wrongful convictions

This is absolutely disgusting. I wonder how many 100s or 1000s of cases are like this in the US. I'd be more than happy to support a law requiring ALL of those involved in prosecuting an innocent person to a mandatory prison sentence in general population for doing this to someone.

$4.4M in wrongful convictions
By Beth DeFalco
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

PHOENIX - The city of Phoenix has agreed to pay $3 million to settle a lawsuit filed by a man who was twice wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death, city officials said.

It's the second settlement Ray Krone, 48, has received this year from the government. In April, Maricopa County agreed to pay Krone $1.4 million in compensation.

"I'm just glad for it to be over," said Krone, who spent more than a decade behind bars, including two years on death row. "I hope I won't ever need lawyers again."

The Phoenix City Council approved the settlement last week, said city spokeswoman Toni Maccarone.

Krone was a postal worker when he was arrested in 1991 in the killing of Kim Ancona, a bartender who worked at a Phoenix lounge where Krone played darts.

He was convicted in 1992 and sentenced to death, based largely on expert testimony that supposedly matched his teeth with bite marks found on Ancona.

His conviction was overturned in 1994 on procedural grounds. A new trial was ordered, and Krone was convicted a second time in 1996. In sentencing him the second time, the judge said he wasn't sure that Krone was the killer. He spared Krone the death penalty and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

In 2002, new DNA testing proved Krone wasn't the killer. DNA from the crime scene was linked to a man already in prison for another crime. A trial for the new suspect is pending.

Krone was freed that year, but his wrongful conviction lawsuit dragged on.

In his lawsuit, Krone alleged that Phoenix police did a shoddy job of investigating the murder and didn't look at other suspects closely enough. His lawsuit alleged the county used "altered and manufactured evidence" and that a bite mark expert "gave false testimony which he knew to be untrue."

In addition to mental anguish, Krone said he sued Arizona agencies for the physical pain and suffering he endured. Krone said he was stabbed, his arm was broken and he contracted hepatitis C while in Arizona prisons.

Neither the city nor the county admitted wrongdoing by settling the lawsuit, lawyers said.

Krone won't see all the $4.4 million from the lawsuit. He said some of the money will go to his parents, who spent more than $300,000 and mortgaged their home to pay for his defense. Krone said he also owes about $500,000 in attorney's fees.

The moral of the story is? Don't hang out in bars in AZ or around people that get killed in AZ as you will get beaten, probably raped and contract a disease in that lovely penal system.