Despite a new law authorizing compensation for the wrongfully convicted, KS Atty General Derek Schmidt has denied a request to compensate Lamonte McInytre.
McIntyre spent 23 years in prison for a 1994 double murder he did not commit.
Last year, Kansas became the 33rd state to offer compensation to people who were wrongly imprisoned. The state is required to pay $65,000 for each year they spent behind bars. And Schmidt is now tasked with recommending to the state’s finance counsel whether compensation should be approved.
Under the new state law, McIntyre is owed more than $1.5 million, educational assistance and counseling, as well as other social services.
When then-Gov. Jeff Colyer signed the legislation last year clearing the way for the wrongfully convicted to be compensated, he offered McIntyre and two other men whose convictions were overturned an apology and a promise.
“We will make it right,” Colyer told the three men.
The other two men, Floyd Scott Bledsoe and Richard Jones, have already received more than $1 million in compensation.
In a court filing to answer McIntyre’s claim for financial relief, Schmidt wrote: “The State of Kansas asks that claimant take nothing by his petition.”
Despite the reams of affidavits and case files that led Wyandotte County to drop the charges against McIntyre, Schmidt claims his innocence has not been proven as required by law.
All of those documents were sent to the attorney general, but Schmidt still wants to challenge it, though no physical evidence ties him to the crime, no motive was ever established, and two witnesses have testified that they were coerced into identifying McIntyre as the shooter by Roger Golubski, who was then a detective in Kansas City, Kan., and Terra Morehead, who was a Wyandotte Co. assistant prosecutor.