20 years in prison...what does that get this innocent woman?

This is how messed up the justice system is: Two people spend years in prison for a crime they absolutely didn't commit and the state doesn't want to compensate them for their lost years because they perjured themselves. The perjury? Confessing to the crime they didn't commit.

It isn't a minor consideration. One person served 20 years, the other served 5 1/2 years.

“The path to Mr. Dean's and Ms. Taylor's hell was led by a narrowly focused, almost obsessed, rush to judgment to solve a murder,” Bryan wrote in his orders.

Both are members of the “Beatrice Six,” who were exonerated in 2008 by DNA testing of nearly 25-year-old evidence. The tests proved the six could not have participated in the murder of Helen Wilson, 68, who was killed by a lone assailant never charged in the murder before his own death in 1992.

I know the state has a duty not to spend taxpayer money unless it has to but who in could argue in good conscience against compensation for these people? Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning can.

 “Mr. Dean and Ms. Taylor provided false testimony that led to the conviction of an innocent man,” Bruning said in a statement. “We continue to believe the Nebraska Legislature did not intend to provide recovery to those who commit perjury under the Wrongful Conviction and Imprisonment Act.”

The judge agreed that their testimony was inaccurate. But he found overwhelming evidence to support the contention that Dean and Taylor grew to believe what they were saying during months of pretrial confinement and repeated law enforcement interrogations.

 I have to wonder how the investigators got two people to confess to the crime. Seems to me that it would be hard to convince someone they did murder when they didn't and yet, here it is. So what happened during the interrogations to force the confessions?

This is our justice system.