Two Men Awarded $24m Over Wrong Murder Convictions

Los Angeles City Council has agreed to pay a total of $24.3m in compensation to two men who both spent decades in prison after being wrongly convicted of murder.Kash Register was awarded $16.7m and Bruce Lisker was awarded $7.6m after they filed unrelated lawsuits challenging the police investigations that sent them to jail.
Mr Register served more than 34 years behind bars after a 78-year-old man was shot dead in west Los Angeles in 1979.
A judge overturned his conviction in 2013, noting that police had ignored a witness's sisters, who had said the woman was lying.
Mr Register's lawyer Nick Brustin said: "The City of Los Angeles really stepped up and did the right thing here.
"They recognised that Kash was the victim of a horrible injustice, and that if a jury saw the evidence of misconduct that led to his wrongful conviction, the award could easily have been several times greater."
In a statement, Mr Register said he "can't get these 34 years back, but I hope my case can help make things better for others, through improving the way the police get identifications or other reforms".
Bruce Lisker spent 26 years in prison after his 66-year-old mother was stabbed to death in 1983, when he was 17.
He said he arrived at her house, saw her on the floor through a window, broke in and tried to help her.
Detectives claimed it would have been impossible to see her through the window and alleged that a bloody shoe print at the scene belonged to Mr Lisker.
But an investigation by the Los Angeles Times in 2005 said a new analysis of the print had shown it was not his. He was released in 2009.
He said in a statement: "Finally, after more than 30 years of fighting to establish my innocence and to vindicate my rights, this painful chapter of my life has been brought to a close."
City Councillor Paul Krekorian, who heads the budget committee, said the two cases were "very unfortunate", but did not reflect the way the police operated now.
He said: "It’s just regrettable that these two individuals spent the better part of their lives in prison as a result of the inadequacy of the investigations that happened back then."