For Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, approving the compensation Lamonte McIntyre is owed should not be a tough call.
After all, the 42-year-old Kansas City, Kansas, man spent 23 years in prison for a 1994 double murder he did not commit.
Last year, Kansas became the 33rd state to offer compensation to people who were wrongly imprisoned. The state is required to pay $65,000 for each year they spent behind bars. And Schmidt is now tasked with recommending to the states finance counsel whether compensation should be approved.
Under the new state law, McIntyre is owed more than $1.5 million, educational assistance and counseling, as well as other social services. And he has every reason to expect that he should be paid without delay.
When then-Gov. Jeff Colyer signed the legislation last year clearing the way for the wrongfully convicted to be compensated, he offered McIntyre and two other men whose convictions were overturned an apology and a promise.
We will make it right, Colyer told the three men.
Schmidt apparently didnt get the memo.
The other two men, Floyd Scott Bledsoe and Richard Jones, have already received more than $1 million in compensation, had their records expunged, have been given a certificate of innocence, access to counseling and state of Kansas health care benefits for two years. Bledsoe was falsely accused and later convicted of murder and kidnapping, and Jones was sent to prison for a robbery committed by another man whose appearance was similar.
McIntyre, though, has been denied his due.
Incredibly, Schmidt believes that McIntyre, whose wrongful conviction became one of the driving forces for passing the much-needed compensation legislation, is owed nothing.
In a court filing to answer McIntyres claim for financial relief, Schmidt wrote: The State of Kansas asks that claimant take nothing by his petition.
It feels like I am being bullied, McIntyre said Friday.
McIntyre was arrested when he was 17 and then convicted at age 18 of a double murder in Kansas City, Kansas. He says he is ready to fight the system again, yet worn out from decades of trying to prove his innocence.
And he should be.
McIntyres case has been well-chronicled. And the facts are conclusive.
