Missouri’s attorney general is in court arguing that the state does not have to pay two men it once imprisoned for murders that judges later threw out. Dale Helmig and Darryl Burton are asking for $2.4 million between them, for 38 years behind bars, under a compensation law Gov. Mike Kehoe signed in 2025.
The law pays about $65,000 for each year of wrongful incarceration, in annual installments rather than a lump sum. Until then, only people cleared by DNA evidence could collect, and only $100 a day. Missouri has exonerated 56 people since 1989, and DNA played a role in 15 of those cases. The expansion was meant for everyone else: people freed after a witness recanted or evidence surfaced late.
Black people are 13.6% of the U.S. population and 53% of the 3,200 exonerations the National Registry of Exonerations had recorded by 2022, its race report found. Murder was the widest gap: Black people were about 7.5 times as likely as white people to be wrongly convicted. Whoever Missouri decides to pay, or not, is a question that reaches Black families disproportionately.
Attorney General Catherine Hanaway’s office makes two arguments, as the Marshall Project and the Missouri Independent reported Thursday. The law is not retroactive, and Helmig is not actually innocent. At a September hearing in Gasconade County, Assistant Attorney General Andrew Clarke said “most laws passed in Missouri are prospective.” Circuit Judge Craig Hellmann dismissed Helmig’s petition, ruling he had not established actual innocence.
Helmig, now 70, was convicted in 1993 of killing his mother, Norma, and served more than 14 years. A judge freed him in 2010, finding “clear and convincing evidence” of innocence. He lives on about $530 a month in Social Security and works driving a cab and painting decks. He is seeking about $1 million. “They don’t care, it doesn’t matter if you’re innocent,” he said.
His attorney, Sean O’Brien, said: “Dale is unquestionably innocent, the statute was written with people just like him in mind, and the State is invoking every conceivable legal technicality to obstruct his recovery.” Helmig’s lawyers have asked the Western District appeals court to recall its 2011 opinion, which the state cites. That request is pending.
Burton spent more than 24 years in prison for a fatal shooting at a St. Louis gas station. The case rested on two witnesses, one of whom recanted and one whom a court found unreliable. He was freed in 2008 and is seeking more than $1.5 million. A St. Louis judge held an initial hearing in early October, and arguments are expected next year. The attorney general’s office has said it will make separate arguments in his case.
State Rep. LaKeySha Bosley, a St. Louis Democrat who sponsored an earlier version of the bill, said: “I don’t believe that we should put a limit or timeline on those who lost years of their life.”
The statute does not say plainly whether it covers people freed before it took effect. Judges in both cases will have to decide, and Helmig’s appeal is the first test.
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