[FreePaul]

If the people who conducted the investigation and prosecution had to pay it would be a fair decision. As it is they probably have profited from the “conviction” and are going to go free with their gains.

[SteveMcKing]

This sounds like a really bad case.

I don't weep when career criminals are wrongly sentenced... the one time they actually didn't kill somebody...

[FreedomCalls]

Seems a bit excessive to me. I'd do 18 years in prison for a guarantee of $5 million -- that's $278,000 a year, or $23,000 a month, or $5,342 a week, or $133 an hour for a 40-hour work week or $32 an hour for every actual hour he was incarcerated. I'm sure others would too if it were offered at that rate. Our soldiers in Iraq offer their lives for a lot less after all -- though most don't do it for the money alone of course.

[Mr. Bird]

I'd like to know a little more here. Did the state maliciously prosecute? Did they withhold exculpatory evidence?

They're going to be fighting wrongful imprisonment lawsuits for years if they are just trying to make themselves feel better. I feel very, very bad for anyone doing time for someone else's transgression, but throwing money at the wrongly convicted could open a pandora's box. At the least, it will generate frivolous suits.

[Kitten Festival]

I’m ok with this.

[montag813]

Isn’t $1 million sufficient? Why five? That is taxpayers’ money.

[FreedomCalls]

Compare Mr. Tillman's experience (being granted $5,000,000) with that of one Warren Blackwell, also wrongly imprisoned for a rape that he didn't commit:

Man wrongly jailed for three years charged £7,000 by Home Office for 'board and lodging'

Wrongly jailed after a woman cried rape, Warren Blackwell applied for compensation for his three wasted years in prison.

Torn from his family and sent to languish in jail as a convicted sex attacker, the innocent father-of-two imagined he was due a hefty sum for the miscarriage of justice.

Instead, he was flabbergasted to learn the Home Office now intends to charge him nearly £7,000 for "board and lodging".

[goldstategop]

I think if that happened to you or me, no amount of money could make up for our having missed out on life. There's something about that no amount of money can restore.

Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus

[goldstategop]

The other thought I have is no amount of money can restore a trashed reputation. To be accused of a rape one didn't do is an ordeal that literally destroy a man. And as we seen the DuxLax case, the justice system is far from looking at the evidence dispassionately and exclusing partisan motives and passions that could compromise true justice - which is finding out the truth about the crime.

Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus