Gage County Board members have frequently referred to the Beatrice 6 judgment as a “cloud of doom†hanging over the county.
Those clouds are now parting, as the board on Wednesday approved its final payments in the $28.1 million judgment awarded to six people wrongfully convicted of a 1985 murder in downtown Beatrice: Joseph White, Ada JoAnn Taylor, James Dean, Thomas Winslow, Kathleen Gonzalez and Debra Shelden.
Officials previously estimated the final payment, which was for just over $2 million, would be made in May, but was it was approved during Wednesday’s regular meeting.
“A little over four years ago we kind of started moving forward with this,†said Board Chairman Erich Tiemann. “The board came up with a plan they wanted to move forward with and we’ve stayed on that course the entire time to maintain what we have, take care of infrastructure, maintain operations and pay for this as quickly as possible. We were going to be somewhere around eight years, we hoped. That could’ve been a little quicker, it could have taken longer. There were times we wondered if this was going to be 10 years.â€
People are also reading…
The judgment was able to be paid in four years thanks to additional funding sources that included a sales tax, funds from the state and an insurance payout.
“I’m not sure if we should be celebrating or crying right now,†board member Gary Lytle said. “It’s definitely good to put this behind us. Once we hit the pay for the judgment period, I think this team has pulled together and done about as good as could have been expected.â€
Tiemann said that including attorney fees, Gage County spent a total of $30.7 million.
Sales tax revenue and funds from the state were both the result of bills introduced by District 30 Sen. Myron Dorn of Adams, who was chairman of the Gage County Board of Supervisors before being elected to the Legislature. State funding totaled $4 million, while a half-cent sales tax that went into effect at the start of 2020 and expired at the end of 2022 raised $5.857 million.
The board voted in September 2018 to raise property taxes to the legal limit to raise money to pay members of the Beatrice 6.
It raised the levy to the maximum allowable 50 cents in anticipation of the judgment. For taxpayers, that has amounted to $120 annually on property valued at $100,000. The levy was lowered by about 5 cents when the current budget was approved in anticipation of the judgment being paid.
Gage County also benefited from a 2020 settlement with insurance carriers that provided $6 million for the judgment.
After the judgment was awarded, Gage County filed lawsuits against Nebraska Intergovernmental Risk Management Association (NIRMA) and Employers Mutual Casualty (EMC) insurance companies, which both argued they were not obligated to provide coverage.
In the settlement, EMC paid $3.9 million, NIRMA paid $1.98 million and $95,000 was paid by four excess insurance companies.
The county was ordered to pay the judgment after losing the federal civil rights case filed by the six in 2009.
Following a 1989 cold case investigation into the rape and murder of Helen Wilson in her downtown Beatrice apartment four years earlier, the six were convicted and spent a combined 75 years in prison.
DNA evidence later pointed to a seventh person — Bruce Allen Smith, who died in 1992 — as the actual perpetrator.
They were exonerated in 2008, and the next year, sued Gage County for the reckless investigation that landed them in prison.
After two mistrials, a federal jury found enough evidence that then-Deputy Burdette Searcey and then-Reserve Deputy Wayne Price had violated the six's rights, awarding them a combined $28.1 million.
On Friday, Maren Chaloupka, one of the attorneys who brought the suit against the county said it took from 1989 through 2019 "for Gage County to finally accept responsibility to these six innocent people."
She said they tried to reach a settlement, but the Gage County Board of Supervisors, then led by now-State Senator Myron Dorn, refused. None of the Board of Supervisors attended a single minute of the civil rights trials to learn the facts.
"Gage County paid their lawyers in excess of $2.5 million while Joseph White died awaiting trial, and Kathy Gonzalez died before receiving full compensation, as well," she said.Â
Chaloupka said only one person killed Mrs. Wilson, and that was Bruce Allen Smith.Â
"The facts of the crime scene, which were laid out extensively in the monthlong public trial, proved it. DNA confirmed it. Anyone who ever doubted our clients' innocence could have attended the trial, but Gage County's side of the courtroom was almost completely empty," she said.
That was unfortunate for the Gage County property owners, who had to bear some of the burden in paying the verdict, Chaloupka said.
The four years of payments began after Gage County's threats of filing bankruptcy.
"Our clients have always been innocent. They had nothing to do with this murder. Gage County had a well-paid legal defense team, two federal trials and four appeals to show otherwise. It is time to accept that the only murderer of Mrs. Wilson was Bruce Allen Smith," the attorney said.Â