Two Baltimore Brothers Wrongfully Convicted Of Murder Awarded Nearly $4M Compensation
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Two Baltimore men wrongfully convicted of a 1995 murder have finally received compensation for the 24 years they both spent behind bars.
In May 2019, Eric Simmons and his brother J.R. McPherson were reunited with their families after having spent 24 years in prison on wrongful murder convictions.
This month, the Maryland Board of Public Works announced that both Simmons and McPherson will receive $81,000 for each year they spent in jail, amounting to about $2 million each.
While this money can help exonerees begin to rebuild their lives, Simmons said it can't make up for lost time with those closest to him.
"It's not going to bring my mother back who died in '09 when I was still in prison," he said. "It's not going to bring back the fact that I wasn't in my kids lives."
Simmons, together with the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, presented a bill before the General Assembly earlier this year pushing for changes to the state's compensation law.
"The problem with Maryland's compensation law, unlike laws in most other states, is that it doesn't provide an amount of compensation, it doesn't provide a timeline for when the compensation has to be granted and it actually doesn't require the state to pay at all," Michelle Feldman, State Campaigns Director of the Innocence Project, said.
The Innocence Project said police misconduct played a major role in the case.
Feldman said the state's decision to grant compensation to Simmons and his brother was especially meaningful in this moment of a nationwide call for racial justice and accountability.
Their bill, though, died on the last day of the legislative session before things shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Supporters said this only means they'll be back in Annapolis when the session resumes in January.
"We got to be back out there, and we got to keep telling our stories," Simmons said. "The ones who are out, and the ones who make it out in between now and then, we have to keep this alive."
A spokesperson from the governor's office said Gov. Hogan will carefully review this bill should it reach his desk.
The Office of the Maryland Comptroller said future cases will be reviewed individually and will follow the same formula that's currently in place until such time as any amendments are proposed.