Every so often, the justice system gets it wrong. Take David Gavitt of Ionia. He spent twenty-six years in prison after being convicted of setting a fire that burned down his home and killing his wife and daughters.
But he didn’t do it. Nearly three years ago, efforts by the Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigan law school showed that the evidence used to convict him was wrong, and their work resulted in his release.
What happens in a case like that? You might suppose anyone wrongly imprisoned would be compensated by the state in some way.
And that is in fact the case in most states – but not in Michigan. In fact, when they are finally released, things are even worse for those wrongly convicted than for actual murderers and rapists who are released after serving their sentences.
Convicted felons are eligible for counseling, a clothing allowance, and other rehabilitative services when they get out. But the wrongly convicted get nothing.
Gavitt said the prison authorities essentially just told him, “There’s the door, you’re on your own.” State Senator Steve Bieda of Warren thinks that’s terrible – and has been fighting for years to do something about it.
He was originally motivated by the case of a fellow Macomb County man, Ken Wyniemko.
He spent nine years in prison for a savage and brutal rape until Cooley Law School’s innocence project showed that he, too, couldn’t possibly have committed the crime.
That was more than a decade ago. Every session, Bieda, an attorney himself, introduces a bill called the Wrongful Imprisonment Compensation Act. It would provide up to sixty thousand dollars a year in compensation for victims like Gavitt and Wyniemko.
Only those completely exonerated could apply. His bill actually passed the State House seven years ago, only to die in the Republican-controlled Senate. Last year, it didn’t even come up for a vote. But it will be the first bill Senator Bieda, who was easily reelected last November, introduces this year.
Its chances probably aren’t good. Republicans have a huge majority in the state senate, and many seem bizarrely opposed to any bill that seems to be doing something for convicts, even if, as in this case, the prisoners are totally innocent.
But Bieda doesn’t intend to stop fighting. This weekend he told me, quoting Babe Ruth, that
“every strike brings me closer to the next home run.”
Bieda himself is a history buff who was born exactly twelve hours after President Kennedy told us
“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
He knows that politics is the art of the possible, and sometimes the possible takes a while.
Congressman John Dingell introduced a bill calling for a universal health care system every session for half a century, till the Affordable Care Act finally became law.
Bieda won’t be able to do that; term limits mean he has only four more years, and he will be in the minority for all of them.
But he has been better than most at building bipartisan bridges. And keep your eye on him. Sandy Levin, now eighty-three, will have to retire sometime, and Bieda may well be the odds-on favorite to succeed him in Congress.
Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. You can read his essays online at michiganradio.org. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.
