What happened to Richard Phillips?

2023-01-09 19:01:17 Written by Alex

A man was awarded $1.5 million for a wrongful murder conviction.

 

Richard Phillips, a Michigan man who spent 45 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, has been granted a $1.5 million payout from the state. This is the longest a wrongfully convicted person has ever served in the United States.

He was sentenced to life in prison in October 1972 without the possibility of parole.

Phillips was 27 years old when he was sentenced to life without parole for a fatal shooting in Detroit.

After a long time, prosecutors believe that the case against Phillips was based almost entirely on false testimony from one witness. At that time Phillips was 72 years old.

 

 

Richard Phillips was exonerated in 2018 after the University of Michigan's Innocence Clinic took on his case and declared him the longest-imprisoned innocent man in America. 

The clinic found that a co-defendant told the parole board in 2010 that Phillips had no role in the slaying, the Detroit Free Press reported.

Throughout his over four decades in prison, Phillips maintained his innocence.

 

“I would rather die in prison than admit to something that I didn’t do,” he told WDIV television last year.

 

 

To support himself as he waited for officials to determine his restitution, Phillips sold paintings he had made while locked up.

 

In Michigan, exonerees can qualify for $50,000 for every year spent in prison — meaning Phillips stood to collect more than $2 million. He is only receiving 30 years’ worth of restitution because he was serving a concurrent sentence for a separate armed robbery conviction.

 

His lawyers claim he was wrongfully convicted in that case, too, but prosecutors haven’t acquitted him.

 

“Re-entering society is profoundly difficult for wrongfully convicted individuals,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said. “We must provide compassionate compensation to these men for the harm they suffered.”

 

.His conviction was based on false testimony

 

Phillips was originally convicted of murder for allegedly dragging a man named Gregory Harris out of his car and shooting him dead.

 

The victim's brother-in-law told investigators he had met with Phillips at a bar to discuss the murder.

 

But Phillips maintained his innocence. He told his attorney, "I'd rather die in prison than admit to a murder I did not do."

 

In 2010, another man, Richard Palombo, admitted he had killed Harris.

 

Four years later, the Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigan's law school heard about Polombo's admission. After years of legal wrangling, Phillips was granted a new trial in late 2017.

 

He became a free man in March 2018.

 

Prison walls couldn't contain his creative spirit

 

Behind bars, Phillips began painting in 1990 "to stave off loneliness," his art website says. "He painted to fill the long days. He painted to keep his heart soft and hope alive."

 

His paintings became custom greeting cards he sold to other inmates. He used the proceeds to buy more art supplies.

 

His watercolor paintings often touched on themes of hope and survival.