$250,000 Verdict for Thomas Davis, Wrongfully Convicted of Killing His Wife in a 1969 Nebraska Case

On the night in question in 1969, a car carrying Thomas F. Davis and his wife went off the road outside Grand Island, Nebraska. His wife died from her injuries. Grand Island prosecutors did not treat the death as an accident. A Hall County jury convicted Davis of murder, and on April 1, 1969, he entered the Nebraska State Penitentiary.

The Nebraska Supreme Court reversed the conviction on April 24, 1970. The court found that the trial had been infected by the improper admission of evidence, the withholding of forensic evidence, and prosecutorial misconduct. Davis was released and retried in February 1971. A jury found him not guilty.

The damage from those 13 months inside was permanent. Davis was stabbed in prison, witnessed violence that marked him for life, lost his business, and was separated from his seven children. He walked out of the penitentiary cleared of the charge, but without the life he had before.

Decades passed before he had a legal path to seek any compensation. The Nebraska Legislature eventually enacted the Nebraska Claims for Wrongful Conviction and Imprisonment Act, which allows exonerees to seek damages from the state by proving, by clear and convincing evidence, that they were convicted of a felony, served part of a sentence, had that conviction vacated or were acquitted at retrial, and were in fact innocent.

In 2009, Davis filed a claim under that statute. John Stevens Berry Sr.'s firm, Berry Law, took on the case, with attorneys Perry Pirsch and Matt Aerni handling the litigation. The case stretched more than three years as the legal team worked to establish Davis's innocence and document what the state's wrongful prosecution had cost him.

In 2014, the Hall County District Court entered a verdict of $250,000 in Davis's favor. The award came roughly 45 years after he first entered the penitentiary for a crime two separate juries, and ultimately the Supreme Court of Nebraska, concluded he did not commit.