By Antonio D. French
Filed Wednesday, February 8 at 6:50 AM
The State of Missouri may soon make an attempt to compensate those that have been wrongly convicted of crimes. Republican Sen. Michael Gibbons, from Kirkwood, introduced a bill yesterday that he says creates a new mechanism in the state budget to provide financial relief for wrongly convicted men and women rather than having them compete for the same funds that provide for DNA tests of all inmates in Missouri.
Gibbons said four innocent individuals have not received any form of compensation from the state of Missouri for the lost years of their lives.
One of the state’s more high-profile exoneration cases involved Steve Toney who spent 13 years and 10 months in prison having been convicted of a rape he did not commit. Toney was exonerated in 1993 by DNA evidence but has not received any compensation from the state for the time he was wrongly imprisoned. Toney, as well as three others, were never paid because a previous law exempts anyone exonerated by DNA before Aug. 28, 2003.
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