Kathy Gonzalez knows that many people across the cornfields and cattle ranches of eastern Nebraska believe she is a murderer. It doesn’t change the fact that they owe her millions of dollars.
Ms. Gonzalez was one of six innocent people who collectively spent 77 years in prison for the murder of a 68-year-old woman named Helen Wilson, whose death haunted this rural county for decades. Now, years after DNA evidence exonerated the defendants, they are about to collect a $28 million civil rights judgment against Gage County, which prosecuted them based on false confessions.
But because the county has limited financial resources and a dwindling population, nearly all of its 22,000 residents must foot the bill by paying hundreds or thousands of dollars in higher property taxes. County leaders have pleaded for help from state lawmakers, and even flirted with declaring bankruptcy.
“Do I think it’s fair these people are going to have to pay us off?” Ms. Gonzalez asked. “No. But it wasn’t fair what they did to us, either.”
The $28 million jury award is one of the largest judgments ever levied against such a small place, say experts who study wrongful convictions. It has stirred resentment in the coffee shops and bars of Beatrice, a small town where suspicions about the defendants — known as the Beatrice Six — still linger like an oil stain on the road.
“There’s a feeling of, ‘Why us?’” said Myron Dorn, a state senator and former county supervisor who has introduced a bill that would allow Gage County to impose a sales tax to help raise money. “Why are we being held accountable for paying this off?”
