Ricks v. Michigan (Opinion on Application)
Annotate this CaseIn 1992, plaintiff Desmond Ricks saw a man shoot and kill Gerry Bennett in Detroit. Ricks was on parole then; he began serving concurrent sentences for armed robbery and assault with intent to rob while armed in 1987 and was paroled in 1991. When he witnessed Bennett’s murder, Ricks still had 4 years and 118 days remaining on his armed-robbery and assault sentences. As he fled from the gunman, Ricks dropped his winter coat. It would later be discovered by the police, who used it to connect him to Bennett’s killing. Ricks was convicted of Bennett’s murder, based in large part on ballistics evidence fabricated by a Detroit police officer. The Michigan Innocence Clinic discovered that a Detroit Police Department officer had fabricated the ballistics evidence used to convict Ricks. A circuit court issued an order vacating his murder and felony-firearm convictions and sentences; Ricks was released from prison the same day, and the charges were dismissed. Ricks filed a Wrongful Imprisonment Compensation Act (WICA) complaint with the Michigan Court of Claims seeking compensation for the almost 25 years he was wrongfully imprisoned from October 13, 1992 to May 26, 2017. This case was about one of the exceptions enumerated in the Act: MCL 691.1755(4), which barred compensation for any time served under a consecutive sentence for another conviction. The question presented was whether this exception applied when a wrongful conviction alone triggered a parole revocation, which required the WICA claimant’s parole-revoked sentence to be served before the sentence for the wrongful conviction would begin to run. The Supreme Court held that it did not, because the time served under the parole-revoked sentence was not served under a consecutive sentence for another conviction. The Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Court of Appeals and remanded this case to the Court of Claims for further proceedings.
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