So true story but he did get 1 million in the end.
cnn . com/2016/12/21/us/tennessee-inmate-wrongly-imprisoned/index.html
independent . co.uk/news/world/americas/tennessee-dallas-wrong-jailed-conviction-compensation-lawrence-mckinney-rape-burglary-31-years-a8268641.html
Yes, and no. 31 years- $1million dollars.... that’s $32,000 a year give or take. Given that he was imprisoned in 1978 at 22, it’s unlikely he would have earned that much money which would have been a very healthy salary through the 80’s and in some places, even into the 90’s. It’s more than many people make in 2019 depending on where you live. The problem is we can’t really say wether he would have done better or worse. He DID lose his freedom, he suffered through incarceration, missed many opportunities in life and experiences. But here in lies the problem, a practical one: what dollar value do you put on those things? Going out with friends, trips to the movies, first dates? What is the dollar value of a human life?
There come real practical concerns. How many people have life insurance- and of those policies, how many even pay one million dollars? How much money would someone have to pay you for you to agree to let them do this to your mother or most cherished person and have you be ok with it? I’ve had dates or weekends that I’d trade for a couple thousand dollars or less- and others that I wouldn’t have given up for any amount of money. But then- what happens if we put a dollar value on that? If you make me miss a concert I’m excited about- can I sue you for the ticket cost? But if that potential weekend is valued at $10,000 in “memories...” that gets problematic. If we start speculating “if I would have gone to the concert maybe the singing would have fallen for me and we’d get married and I’d be rich... so you owe me hundreds of millions...”
Most people will work their whole lives for 1/3 or 1/2 of a day and in a lifetime will make about $2.3 million dollars- of which they’ll keep about a million after taxes etc. So subtracting weekends and PTO, a person working half the time will take home about that in their lives if they make $50k a year. And that’s sort of a factor in what a life is “worth” or as close as we get as a society isn’t it? Whatever it is society is willing to pay you for your time is basically the dollar value society says you’re worth more or less.
But then it gets a little dark. If a human life is worth.... $5 million dollars? Now there is a dollar value to life. Someone kills your family member- maybe through negligence or accident. They owe $5million. But who gets the money? Is it split up between anyone who says they knew that person? Is some portion donated to social well being for the loss to society of that person? How’s that work? Oddly enough- when wrongful death payouts occur the amount paid is all over the place. So there’s no single value or logic applied to the value of a life.
And then- some lives are insane. We spent many millions of dollars or more trying to kill Osama Bin Laden. His life was worth at least 10x the million they gave this guy in practical terms. We spend many millions of dollars a year protecting the lives of people like celebrities, politicians, etc. But if a state is responsible for paying those kinds of figures as real cash value in exchange for a life or suffering... oh man...
Japan would never be finished paying China or Korea. China would never be done paying... lots of people including HK. The Germans would be a poverty stricken country by the time they finished paying Israel, France, the UK, Africa, etc. etc. and the Holocaust... that would be worth more money than is on earth as would the Purges and Gulags of Russia.
How much would America owe those in Gitmo and elsewhere? There’d be a lot of rich Afghani civilians, Iraqis, etc. after we finished paying multi million dollars to each and every civilian who suffered this sort of loss or a death from our activities. Oddly enough though.... a single bomb strike can cost multiple millions of dollars. So we are certainly willing to pay money to kill these people, just not pay money for their lives.
That’s without even getting into what the US would owe native peoples or what many other countries would owe native peoples for time and lives lost if we monetized the human life.
All in all I DO think that $1million is an insulting sum of money to trade for a wrongful, likely racially motivated wrongful theft of most of a man’s life. Even if he is 60, $1 million isn’t that much to retire on, especially when you don’t have a house or any other retirement income or support. That’s $100k for 10 years. I think something like at least $100k a year every year until he dies on top of that $1 million would be at least a less offensive trade for what he lost.
You’ll never be able to pay an equitable amount for what he could have done or what he went through. You just can’t. There’s no amount of money that I’d be happy with to trade the life I have now to go back to 22 and spend until I was 60 in prison. No amount. You can’t buy time back or memories. It would be nice if they gave him enough to take care of him for the rest of his life and to help him make new memories. So it isn’t very much- but it’s also a coldly logical sum for 40 years of a man’s life.
cnn . com/2016/12/21/us/tennessee-inmate-wrongly-imprisoned/index.html
independent . co.uk/news/world/americas/tennessee-dallas-wrong-jailed-conviction-compensation-lawrence-mckinney-rape-burglary-31-years-a8268641.html