LA is sorry! Two men jailed for decades after wrongful murder convictions to get over $24 million
As a form of compensation, the Los Angeles City Council has voted to pay $16.7 million and $7.6 million to Kash Register and Bruce Lisker respectively who spent a combined 60 years in jail for murders they didn’t commit.
Their cases were similar.
They were both arrested as teenagers in relation to separate murders. They were both convicted for those murders and they were jailed. And they also both complained that the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) concocted evidence against them.
Register won his freedom in 2013 after lawyers and students from Loyola Law School cast doubt on the testimony of a key prosecution witness. He had spent 34 years in jail at the time.
Lisker was released from prison in 2009 after a Times investigation into his conviction. He had spent 26 years in prison.
Although they don’t feel the compensation is good enough, they are both happy to move on with their lives.
“I can’t get these 34 years back, but I hope my case can help make things better for others, through improving the way the police get identifications,” Register said in a statement.
And Lisker said
“The toll this ordeal has taken on me and my family is incalculable. The money is nowhere near enough. How can one place a monetary figure on a lifetime of stolen freedom, of crushed aspirations and a shattered reputation, on my mother’s tragic murder going unsolved and neglected for 33 years and counting? There are no words, just as there is no amount that can adequately compensate me for what’s happened.”
City officials described the two cases as “very unfortunate” outcomes of police misconduct in times past.
“It’s just regrettable that these two individuals spent the better part of their lives in prison as a result of the inadequacy of the investigations that happened back then,” City Councilman, Paul Krekorian said..
