The price of wrongful conviction: $2 million

Claude McCollum, who spent more than two years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, has settled his wrongful-conviction suit for $2 million, according to a report in this morning’s Lansing State Journal.

McCollum was convicted four years ago of murdering a Lansing Community College professor in a classroom. Video evidence that showed him sleeping in another part of the campus when the murder occurred never made it to the jury. Later, another man confessed to the murder.

After McCollum was released from prison, he celebrated his freedom by suing everyone who had anything to do with his arrest and conviction. See, The Michigan Lawyer, Will patience pay off in civil suit against prosecutors and police?

Most defendants were dismissed from the case. From the LSJ:

The settlement, reached late Tuesday, brings an end to two and a half years of litigation that eventually centered on whether Lansing Community College police Detective Rodney Bahl hid evidence of McCollum’s innocence.

Three attorneys, Hugh Clarke, Jr., Thomas Wuori and E. Thomas McCarthy, represented McCollum in the civil suit.

They’ve structured the settlement to be paid out over a number of years. Says Clarke in the LSJ:

We have taken all the steps we can to protect him from any of the vultures and con-artists.

Don’t even apply – it’s locked up, it’s not there, and he won’t have it.