/ Local News

05/15/2008

Associated Press

Baton Rouge's Metro Council has unanimously agreed to pay a $1 million settlement to a man who served more than 16 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit.

DNA testing cleared Gene Bibbins of the rape in 2003. He subsequently filed a federal lawsuit against the city, and the police officers and technicians who collected the evidence that convicted him.

The settlement, approved Wednesday, will be paid in increments of $333,333 annually over three years.

Walter Monsour, the mayor's chief administrative officer, said the city-parish only budgets $1 million per year to settle lawsuits, but may have to make a budget supplement to cover the cost of Bibbins' suit — the highest in recent city-parish history.

In his lawsuit, Bibbins claims investigating officers ignored the 13-year-old girl's description of the rapist as having long, curly hair. Instead, the lawsuit contends that police focused on Bibbins — who had short hair — because he had a radio that was stolen from the girl's room by the rapist.

In 2004, the same DNA evidence that cleared Bibbins of the rape of the teenager, showed he had committed a separate rape in the past. Bibbins maintained the second rape, involving a 22-year-old woman in 1985, was consensual sex. But he accepted a plea deal that allowed him to use six years of the time he had already spent in prison to serve as a sentence for that crime.

Councilwoman Lorri Burgess said she thinks the $1 million settlement is too low. She noted that a man who was wrongfully incarcerated in another state for only 60 days was recently awarded $2 million in damages.

And, she said that Bibbins will only get about $600,000 from the settlement after his attorneys are paid and a contribution is made to the Innocence Project, which used DNA evidence to clear him.

Bibbins' proposed $1 million settlement comes on top of a $150,000 payment from the state that a district judge ordered it pay Bibbins in 2006. State law allows a wrongfully convicted person to receive a maximum of $15,000 for each year spent in prison, up to a maximum of 10 years.

Bibbins is currently in jail on drug charges unrelated to the rapes.

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Information from: The Advocate, http://www.2theadvocate.com