A Missouri man who spent 10 years behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit will receive millions from an insurance company.
Ryan Ferguson is set to receive $38 million in damages in the case against Traveler’s Insurance, who failed to pay to him the money owed in a lawsuit, a jury decided on Friday, according to ABC 17 News.
‘This verdict will have a widespread effect on wrongful conviction cases across the country when the insurer refuses to participate in the settlement negotiations and refuses to pay their share of the verdict immediately,’ one of his attorneys, Kathleen Zellner, told ABC 17 News.Â
Justice was finally served for Ryan Ferguson. The jury heard us loud and clear.’
Ferguson was convicted at age 19 of killing Kent Heitholt, a then-Columbia Daily Tribune sports editor. His conviction was thrown out in 2013 after it was revealed prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense, according to the outlet.
Ferguson, alongside six former Columbia Police Department officers, will receive the payment.
Ferguson is expected to 86 percent of the payout – or roughly $48,905,000 – while each of the others will get two percent each, according to ABC 17 News.
The six officers involved are Jeffery Nichols, William Westbrook, John Short, Loyd Simmons, Latisha Burns and Bryan Liebhart.
They worked on his original murder case and were added as plaintiffs to the Travelers Insurance case after they were denied coverage from the agency, according to Zellner.
‘The officers were put in a no-win situation and Ryan was put in a situation where he could not collect his verdict without being able to sue Travelers on behalf of the officers,’ Zellner told the outlet.
‘This is the highest the highest verdict in the United States for 10 years of imprisonment.’
Ferguson sued Travelers in 2017 after he had already been released from prison, allegedly they ‘intentionally disregarded the financial interest of the officers in the hopes of escaping the obligation to fund the Officers’ defense and to escape the obligation to indemnify them for a significant financial obligation,’ according to ABC 17 News.
The company was ordered to pay him $1million for each year he was in prison, plus an additional $354,000 for legal fees on behalf of the City of Columbia. He was paid $2.75million.
The appeals court sided with the former inmate and awarded him $5.3 million, according to ABC 17 News.
Last month, the case went to trial to try Ferguson and the officers’ claim against the insurance company.
He was convicted of murder with the only evidence linking him to the crime being testimony from two witnesses who have since recanted their statements under oath.
He has maintained his innocence throughout his imprisonment.
Ferguson was just 21 when he was sentenced to 40 years for a murder his friend Chuck Erikson had implicated him in, despite Erikson not remembering any details of the night in question.
Even after Erikson recanted his account, telling an appeals court he had lied under oath, Ferguson remained behind bars.
In his police interviews, Erikson, who was a drug user, was unable to give details of the crime, wrongly stating that Mr. Heitholt had been strangled by a shirt, or a bungee cord, before the detective questioning him tells Erikson it was a belt.
He claimed, however, that he struck the editor once, before Ferguson strangled him.
‘The police threatened me to implicate Ferguson or else I would be solely responsible for Heitholt’s death and be charged with first-degree murder and possibly sentenced to death,’ Erickson said in an affidavit.
Despite fingerprints, a bloody footprint and other evidence found at the scene not matching Erikson or Ferguson, police arrested them.
Ferguson stated to police that on the night Heitholt was killed, he and Erikson had gone to a bar and then he drove them home.
