Senator pulls claims board bill before vote

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A vote was canceled last-minute Thursday on a bill that would dramatically alter the way claims for the wrongfully incarcerated are processed.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, said he took SB 587 off the judiciary committee’s schedule because he knows he doesn’t have the votes to pass it if it got to the full Senate. He said he is working on a compromise.

“I don’t think the majority would vote for the first bill,” Grothman said.

The bill seeks to make a number of changes to the abilities of the claims board. It would increase the amount a person who was wrongfully convicted and incarcerated of a crime could receive from $5,000 to $15,000 for each year spent in prison. That amount would be capped at $200,000.

It also would not allow claimants to receive compensation for time they spend under electronic monitoring. And circuit court judges no longer would be allowed to review and overturn claims board decisions if a claimant disagrees.

The Wisconsin Innocence Project – a University of Wisconsin Law School project dedicated to investigating and defending those who were wrongfully convicted – has objected to Grothman’s bill for a number of reasons. Director Keith Findley said $15,000 a year still would mean Wisconsin pays claimants less than most of the country.

He also said that having no check on the process by a judge could allow board members to “act discriminately, act irrationally and there’s no recourse.”

Grothman said he still is talking to lawmakers and interested parties, including “some people that listen to The Innocence Project’s objections,” to see if a deal can be worked out before the session ends. He said judicial review is “one thing we’re looking at.”

The author of the bill and its sponsor in the Assembly, Rep. Pat Strachota, R-West Bend, did not immediately return a phone call. Strachota is a member of the claims board.

SB 587 is the second bill introduced this session that seeks to overhaul the claims board’s process. AB 519, put forth by Rep. Garey Bies, R-Sister Bay, was introduced Nov. 22, but was never voted out of the Assembly’s Committee on State Affairs and Government Operations. It sought to increase to $50,000 a year the amount a claimant could receive.

Another bill, AB 290, would pay Robert Stinson, a Milwaukee man who spent 23 years in prison for a homicide he didn’t commit, an additional $90,000. Stinson had requested $5,000 for each year he was in prison, plus an additional $14,000 for attorney fees.

The full Assembly will take that bill up Tuesday. The Senate passed a version in November that would up Stinson’s payout to $136,000.

Other members of the claims board did not immediately return messages left Thursday. Follow @eheisigWLJ