Restoring Lost Years

What is 19 years of a man’s life worth?

It’s a question likely to be asked in the case of DeWayne McKinney, who was freed from prison Jan. 28 after being wrongfully convicted of the 1980 murder of an Orange Burger King manager.

McKinney, who is now savoring his first days of freedom, says it’s too early to think about any compensation he might receive.

“It’s something I will look into if I have access to it,” said the 39-year-old man who as a counselor’s clerk in prison earned 18 cents an hour. “Whether I have $1 or $1 million, it doesn’t matter. . . . My life is not dictated by what I wish I got but what I have.”

But others believe McKinney deserves compensation for his years behind bars, though determining exactly how much remains an issue of debate.

Before McKinney’s release, Assembly Minority Leader Scott Baugh (R-Huntington Beach) introduced a bill that if passed could allow McKinney to receive $659,000 from the state--$100 for each of 6,590 days he spent in prison since his Jan. 12, 1982, conviction.

“It is the least we can do, put some change in his pocket so he can go on with his life,” the lawmaker said.

Baugh’s bill would apply to anyone wrongly convicted of a crime who is later found by a judge to be “factually innocent.” That may present a roadblock for McKinney. Even though Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas conceded there were grave doubts about McKinney’s conviction, he fell short of declaring him innocent.

Authorities now suspect another man of killing the Burger King manager, but no charges have been filed. The suspect, who is in state prison, has refused to talk with investigators.

“In 31 years, I’ve had only half a dozen who were declared factually innocent,” said Ron Brower, a local attorney who represented Kevin Lee Green, the man freed in 1996 after spending 16 years in prison for a murder he did not commit.

Getting such a finding would make McKinney eligible for at least $10,000 in compensation even if Baugh’s bill does not pass. Moreover, it would also strengthen McKinney’s case if he sues prosecutors or police in civil court.

“The debt owed to society was not his debt to pay, so society needs to pay him,” said Kevin Green from his home in Jefferson City, Mo. “There is no amount of money that makes it worth doing that much time.”

Green, 41, was found factually innocent through DNA evidence. Last year, a special bill sponsored by Baugh paid Green $620,000.

Green was freed after investigators matched DNA evidence to serial rapist Gerald Parker. Green was accused of beating and raping his wife in 1979 and causing the death of their unborn child. Parker, convicted last year for the crime and the murder of five other Orange County women, is on death row.

There is no DNA evidence in McKinney’s case.

McKinney was 21 when convicted of the execution-style slaying of 19-year-old Walter Bell during the December 1980 robbery. He has always proclaimed his innocence.

A break in the case came two years ago when the Orange County public defender’s office received a letter from a prison inmate who said he was present when the robbery was planned.

Charles Hill named Raymond Herman Jackett III as the gunman. The alleged getaway driver, Willie Charles Walker, a convicted rapist and robber, confirmed the story in interviews with investigators, according to court documents.

McKinney’s public defender filed a motion in September seeking a new trial. On Jan. 28, Rackauckas asked a judge to release McKinney, saying there was strong evidence casting doubt on McKinney’s conviction. The move means McKinney is legally innocent, but not factually innocent until he files a legal motion and a judge makes such a finding.

Rackauckas, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment on his office’s position should McKinney file a motion for factual innocence.

“We would need to see any papers filed by the defense,” said spokeswoman Tori Richards.

Some believe McKinney deserves compensation--even without the “factually innocent” finding.

“People say the criminal justice system makes mistakes,” said Lawrence Marshall, director of the Center on Wrongful Conviction at the Northwestern University School of Law. “The question is, who should bear those risks? Should that individual bear all the burden or are we, all of us collectively as a society, responsible to make he or she whole again?”

McKinney said he spent the first week of his freedom getting reacquainted with life on the outside. He visited his estranged son Anthony, 18, on Monday and has been living temporarily with friends in Costa Mesa.

After nearly two decades behind bars, even cordless phones and car stereos confound him, he said.

“In prison, I never ever sat at a meal table for more than five minutes,” he said. “In prison there is only one objective when you sit, to eat. You are always in fear of violence, of being stabbed. . . . Things that people take for granted, I don’t know what to do.”