Wrongly Jailed Ex-O.C. Resident to Get $620,000

Gov. Gray Davis signed an unprecedented bill Friday that gives $620,000 in compensation to a former Orange County man who spent 16 years in prison after he was wrongly convicted of bludgeoning his wife.

“This compensation will never make up from the days and months actually missed,” said Kevin Lee Green, 41, who now lives outside of Jefferson City, Mo.

“While I was in prison, my father went blind, my daughter from my first marriage grew up, my grandparents died thinking who knows what,” he said. “There are a lot of things that money can’t do anything about.

“This will just make the next 16 years a little easier than the last 16 years.”

Based on DNA tests, a judge in 1996 found Green innocent of the 1979 rape and attempted murder of his wife and the murder of their daughter, who was stillborn after the attack. Another man later confessed to the crime.

Assemblyman Scott Baugh (R-Huntington Beach) introduced the bill for state compensation after reading news reports about Green, a former Tustin resident. Green could collect only $10,000 from the state because the judicial system had acted appropriately based on evidence available at trial.

The award is unprecedented because it was offered to a person declared “factually innocent” by a judge. The term means there is no question that the individual did not commit the crime, and it is a greater vindication than overturning a guilty verdict.

Baugh said there have been fewer than a dozen such cases.

“We’ve established a good precedent here,” Baugh said. “When the system fails an individual and he is declared factually innocent, that individual should be compensated.”

Green has appeared on television talk shows but spends most of his days at a Walmart store stocking paint and lightbulbs for $7.80 an hour. He said he got a $1.50 raise after “my boss found out I was a celebrity.”

Green, a corporal in the Marine Corps when the attack on his wife occurred, said he will keep the job. He plans to use some of the money for his retirement and some to go to college, where he hopes to get a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice.

He speaks before law enforcement groups and wants to develop a career as a consultant to law enforcement.