The State of Oregon and Earl Bain have been in a court battle for years. Bain was given a gubernatorial pardon after six years in jail for a crime that prosecutors later said he didn’t commit. A deal from April 25 says that Bain will get about $340,000.
That’s about two-thirds of the most he can get under a new law that was passed in 2022 and lets people who were wrongly convicted sue the state for money.
In court, Bain would have had to show that there was a “preponderance of evidence” that he was not guilty in order to get the full amount. That’s been hard to do, which makes supporters angry because they think the state is working too hard to keep victims of the justice system from getting benefits. The Huffington Post wrote a long article about Bain at the end of last year.
The Oregon Innocence Project, which defended Bain in this case, said in a statement, “He was angry and upset that the office of the attorney general ignored the governor’s finding of innocence and used his request for compensation and the trauma of his wrongful conviction as bargaining chips, but in the end he gave his lawyer permission to look for a settlement.” It was the best result Mr. Bain could have had.
The 2022 bill, which offered to pay the wrongfully convicted $65,000 per year in prison and $25,000 per year on parole, was pushed by Bain, an Army veteran who served in Afghanistan. The bill was passed.
In 2009, a panel in Malheur County found him guilty of sexually abusing his daughter, but they did not all agree. In 2015, she changed her story, and Bain got a rare pardon from Gov. Kate Brown, who said he was “actually innocent.”
Bains says, “Money can’t make up for all the bad things my family and I have gone through because of my conviction, but it will help us rebuild.”
Source: Wweek