In one of their final acts before bringing this year's legislative session to a close, lawmakers agreed Friday to give Dail and others eligible for compensation for wrongful convictions $50,000 for each year they spent in prison.

Lawmakers raised the compensation cap from $20,000 a year, and raised the maximum that could be paid to an individual to $750,000.

"What I want to you to think about is if your child were accused of a crime and were sent to prison as Dwayne Dail and others have been," Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, a Carrboro Democrat, told her colleagues in the Senate.

The Senate voted 37-1 in favor of the measure. The House, after several members had left, then voted 87-1 to concur with the Senate and send the bill to Gov. Mike Easley for his signature.

Dail was wrongfully convicted by a jury in 1989 of raping a 12-year-old Goldsboro girl.

'Damaged person'

Kinnaird recounted the brutal treatment Dail received in prison because he was believed to be a child rapist. A few years into his sentence, Dail asked for DNA testing, Kinnaird said, but was told the evidence had been lost.

"He is now a very damaged person," Kinnaird said. "We feel this is what the people owe to someone who has been wrongly convicted and so badly treated."

The state has already paid Dail under the old rate. But Christine Mumma, director of the N.C. Center on Actual Innocence and the lawyer who worked to free Dail, said he would be eligible to receive more money.

The proposal had contained a provision that would have shielded the compensation payments from child support claims, but the Senate deleted it.

Dail's former girlfriend sued him for child support after his release last year. The lawsuit was dropped, Mumma said, but the issue was never resolved.

Under the measure, wrongfully convicted former inmates could be awarded state job training for at least a year, and education at a state community college or university with tuition and fees paid.

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