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Perdue approves $500K for wrongly convicted man

By Staff and Wire Reports, Atlanta Journal-Constitution (free registration required), May 6, 2009

Gov. Sonny Perdue has approved a $500,000 payout for a Georgia man who spent almost three decades in prison before DNA tests cleared him of rape.

Perdue signed the resolution compensating John Jerome White on Tuesday.

He was convicted in 1979 of raping a Meriwether County woman but was released in 2007.

The elderly rape victim identified White as her attacker in 1979 during a police lineup.

Oddly, the actual attacker, James Parham, was standing in the same lineup, but the victim didn’t ID him. He was charged and jailed in 2007.

The 48-year-old White had initially been set to receive $709,000 but Georgia lawmakers reduced that amount after it was revealed White had a separate conviction on a burglary charge.

Critics said the state shouldn’t be compensating a “career criminal.” But supporters said he’d spent most of his life behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit.

The state has paid out $3.9 million to four other inmates cleared through DNA evidence.