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IRS Should Stay Away From Exoneree Payments

By Steve Hall

That's the title of a Dallas Morning News editorial from the Wednesday edition.  LINKThe motive behind the Timothy Cole Act, passed overwhelmingly by the Legislature last year, could not have been clearer: to create a fair system of compensation for those wrongfully sent to prison. Named after a Texas Tech student who died in prison an innocent man, the law's goal was to make exonerees as financially whole as possible for the injustice committed against them. The idea was never to turn injustice into a taxation opportunity for the IRS. Exoneree John Michael Harvey is due $600,000 in compensation for the 12 years he spent in prison for a crime he didn't commit. Now the Internal Revenue Service is demanding its share, as if the compensation for Harvey's lost years were the payout for a winning lottery ticket...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on February 25, 2010 (boomark / email).