House passes nearly $1.79 million in compensation for wrongly imprisoned trio

Michael Hansen, Koua Fong Lee and Roger Olsen each spent time in a Minnesota prison for a crime they did not commit.

While nothing can take back the feelings and memories of time spent bars, nearly $1.79 million in financial compensation could be forthcoming from the state in Fiscal Year 2017.

The monetary awards are part of the annual claims bill that was passed, as amended to fix a typo and punctuation omission, 127-0 by the House Monday.  

Rep. Duane Quam

Sponsored by Rep. Duane Quam (R-Byron), HF3328 now goes to the Senate where it is sponsored by Sen. Jim Carlson (DFL-Eagan).

Each year, a joint House-Senate Subcommittee on Claims meets to determine which petitions will be funded. All state agencies are eligible to receive funding to cover the claims, but the other $11,140 in claims comprising the bill relate to five personal injury claims against the Department of Corrections.

The so-called “Imprisonment and Exoneration Remedies Act” was enacted two years ago to create a compensation process for cases where a person was exonerated of a felony for which they were wrongfully incarcerated.

Under the law, “the claimant is entitled to reimbursement for all restitution, assessments, fees, court costs, and other sums paid by the claimant as required by the judgment and sentence. In addition, the claimant is entitled to monetary damages of not less than $50,000 for each year of imprisonment, and not less than $25,000 for each year served on supervised release or as a registered predatory offender, to be prorated for partial years served.”

“This is the final step … to see some semblance of justice for these men,” said Rep. John Lesch (DFL-St. Paul), who sponsored the 2014 law with Sen. Ron Latz (DFL-St. Louis Park).

The following are the payments due the trio:

• $916,828 for Hansen, who served almost seven years in state prison for a crime after being found guilty of killing his 3-month-old daughter, but was exonerated when a district court ruled that a medical examiner erred regarding the cause of his daughter’s death;
• $475,000 for Olsen, who served approximately 30 months in custody after being found guilty on 12 counts of first- and second-degree criminal sexual conduct, but was exonerated after evidence was discovered that made the accusations “inherently unreliable”; and
• $395,148 for Lee, who was released after 33 months in prison when it was determined his Toyota experienced an acceleration malfunction causing it to crash into another car in St. Paul, killing a man and two children.

The bill would also raise the claims filing fee from $5 to $8. It would create an exception to tort liability exclusions for property claims from inmates or patients of a state institution when a matter comes to the House-Senate Subcommittee on Claims; create a new statute to clarify that the subcommittee hears property claims first denied at the agency level; and raises from $500 to $7,000 the amount to “be investigated by the state or local agency supervising the work to determine if the claim is valid and if the loss is covered by the claimant’s insurance.”

State statute currently has $7,000 cap for any type of claim that can be settled by executive branch agencies. It would also allow the Corrections Department — from where most claims come — to pay medical providers more quickly versus waiting for the annual claims bill.