Missouri man who spent 10 years in prison for crime he didn’t commit is getting a huge payday

A Missouri man who spent 10 years behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit will receive millions from an insurance company.

Ryan Ferguson will receive $38 million in damages in his lawsuit against Traveler’s Insurance, which failed to pay him money he was owed in a lawsuit, a jury decided Friday, according to ABC 17 News.

“This ruling will have a widespread effect on wrongful judgment cases across the country when the insurance company refuses to participate in settlement negotiations and refuses to pay their portion of the judgment immediately,” one of his attorneys, Kathleen Zellner, told ABC 17 News.

‘Justice was finally served for Ryan Ferguson. The jury heard us loud and clear.’

At the age of 19, Ferguson was convicted of killing Kent Heitholt, then a Columbia Daily Tribune sports editor. His conviction was thrown out in 2013 after it was revealed that prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense, according to the outlet.

Ferguson, along with six former Columbia Police Department officers, will receive the payment.

Ferguson is expected to get 86 percent of the payout — or about $48,905,000 — while each of the others will get two percent each, according to ABC 17 News.

The six officers involved are Jeffery Nichols, William Westbrook, John Short, Loyd Simmons, Latisha Burns and Bryan Liebhart.

They worked on his original murder case and were added as plaintiffs to the Travelers Insurance case after they were denied coverage by the agency, according to Zellner.

“The officers were put in a situation where Ryan couldn’t win, and Ryan was put in a situation where he couldn’t collect his judgment without being able to sue Travelers on behalf of the officers,” Zellner told the newspaper.

‘This is the highest sentence in the United States for 10 years in prison.’

Ferguson sued Travelers in 2017 after he had already been released from prison, alleging that they “deliberately ignored the officers’ financial interests in hopes of escaping the obligation to fund the officers’ defense and to escape the obligation to indemnify them for a significant financial liability.” according to ABC 17 News.

The company was ordered to pay him $1 million for each year he served in prison, plus an additional $354,000 in legal fees on behalf of the City of Columbia. He was paid $2.75 million.

Travelers filed an appeal in 2019, saying the insurance policy had not taken effect when Ferguson’s case occurred.

The appeals court sided with the former inmate and awarded him $5.3 million, according to ABC 17 News.

Last month, the case went to trial to test Ferguson and the officers’ claims against the insurance company.

He was convicted of murder, and the only evidence linking him to the crime was the testimony of two witnesses who have since recanted their statements under oath.

He has maintained his innocence throughout his imprisonment.

Ferguson was just 21 when he was sentenced to 40 years for a murder that his friend Chuck Erikson had implicated him in, despite Erikson not remembering any details of the night in question.

Even after Erikson recanted his account and told an appeals court that he had lied under oath, Ferguson remained behind bars.

In his police interviews, Erikson, who was a drug user, was unable to provide details of the crime, falsely stating that Mr. Heitholt had been strangled by a shirt or bungee cord before the detective questioning him told Erikson it was a belt.

However, he claimed he punched the editor once before Ferguson choked him.

“The police threatened me to implicate Ferguson or I would be solely responsible for Heitholt’s death and be charged with first degree murder and possibly sentenced to death,” Erickson said in a statement.

Despite fingerprints, a bloody footprint and other evidence found at the scene that did not match Erikson or Ferguson, police arrested them.

Ferguson told police that on the night Heitholt was killed, he and Erikson had gone to a bar and he drove them home.