SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Sept. 9, 2022 (Gephardt Daily) — A man who spent nearly seven years in prison after being wrongfully convicted will be financially compensated by the State of Utah.
In May of 2008 Michael W. Thompson was sentenced to five-years-to-life after conviction by a Salt Lake County jury, according to a press release this week from the Rocky Mountain Innocence Center. His conviction on two counts of forcible sodomy was reversed by January, 2014, and the prosecutors did not pursue a new trial, RMIC said, eventually dismissing the charges in April of 2014 “after Mr. Thompson served nearly seven years in prison.”
RMIC, along with University of Utah law professor Jensie Anderson, the center’s co-founder, took up Thompson’s case in 2015, since although Thompson had been freed, a dismissal did not constitute innocence under statutes regarding reparation.
A Petition for Determination of Factual Innocence was filed in Salt Lake’s 3rd District Court by RMIC in March 2017, pointing to newly discovered evidence that made Thompson’s presence in the state at the time of the crimes impossible, according to the center’s statement, and findings that the testimony of an expert witness was based on faulty and inaccurate software reports. Years of hearings and filings, short of trial, followed.
On August 30, 2022, 3rd District Judge Su J Chon signed a memorandum decision granting Thompson’s petition and awarding him nearly $300,000 for the years he wrongfully spent incarcerated.
Thompson is the Salt Lake City-based center’s 8th exoneree since its founding in 2000. With three paid staff members, RMIC relies on donations of funding and time by area law firms and other sponsors, the center said, with the firm of Parr Brown Gee & Loveless key to the success of Thompson’s case. RMIC receives an average of 20 requests a month for assistance, according to its website.
“The Rocky Mountain Innocence Center,” it reads,”works to correct and prevent the wrongful conviction of innocent people in Utah, Nevada, and Wyoming.
“RMIC advocates for systemic reform to improve the justice system and to create meaningful opportunities for the wrongfully convicted to prove their innocence and to receive compensation for unjust incarceration.”
