Michigan appeals judges say the repayment is required because a later $7.5 million settlement covered the same wrongful conviction.
DETROIT, MI — A Michigan appeals court has ordered Desmond Ricks, a Detroit man exonerated of a 1992 murder after serving about 25 years in prison, to reimburse the state roughly $1.2 million he was paid under a wrongful-imprisonment law, ruling the money must be returned after he later secured a separate $7.5 million settlement tied to the same case.
Tuesday’s decision underscores how Michigan’s Wrongful Imprisonment Compensation Act works when an exoneree wins additional damages from others. The law pays $50,000 for each year a person was wrongfully incarcerated, but it also requires repayment if the person later receives damages from another source for the same conviction. Ricks, cleared in 2017 after ballistics evidence used at trial was discredited, previously collected a state award and then settled a federal civil rights lawsuit that accused Detroit police of falsifying evidence. The appeals panel said that sequence triggers reimbursement to the state, a ruling that could shape outcomes for other exonerees who receive both state compensation and civil settlements.
Ricks was convicted in 1992 in the fatal shooting of his friend outside a Detroit restaurant and spent a quarter-century in prison insisting he was innocent. In 2017, Wayne County prosecutors dismissed the case after new testing and case reviews showed the bullet evidence used to convict him could not be relied on. Following that exoneration, Ricks filed a claim under Michigan’s compensation statute and received a payment of about $1.2 million—roughly $50,000 for each qualifying year served. He later sued in federal court over alleged fabrication of ballistics evidence by Detroit officers in the original investigation, a claim city officials denied while ultimately agreeing to settle. In 2022, the city approved a $7.5 million settlement resolving the civil rights suit brought by Ricks and his daughters. “Desmond Ricks endured the worst harm and suffering you can imagine,” attorney Wolf Mueller said after the appeals ruling, arguing the state payment “doesn’t come close to the harm he suffered.”
The three-judge panel focused on a single provision of the law that says a state award is “subject to setoff or reimbursement” if the exoneree later obtains damages from “any other person” for the same wrongful conviction. Judges said the state’s payment and the Detroit settlement covered the same injury—Ricks’s wrongful imprisonment—and that the statute leaves no room for partial offsets or equitable adjustments. Court filings indicate the federal settlement totaled $7.5 million and included money for Ricks and his daughters. The court noted attorneys retained a portion as fees, but it found that even after fees, Ricks himself received more than the amount paid by the state, which made full reimbursement appropriate. The judges did not reweigh whether Ricks was entitled to the original state award; they affirmed only that the later settlement requires him to pay back the state funds. Unknowns remain about the exact timing of repayment and whether any administrative credits will be applied to the total. The court said those details do not change the requirement to reimburse the full state award.
Ricks’s case rose to prominence in Detroit as one of several exonerations linked to problems in the city’s former crime lab, which was shuttered years earlier after audits uncovered errors. Ricks’s exoneration in 2017 drew attention from innocence advocates and prompted intense scrutiny of how ballistic evidence was handled in the early 1990s. After his release, Ricks spoke publicly about missing his daughters’ childhoods and the challenges of rebuilding a life after decades behind bars. The 2022 settlement became one of Detroit’s larger wrongful-conviction payouts in recent years and followed City Council deliberations that balanced litigation risk with calls for accountability. Michigan’s compensation law, enacted in 2016 and effective in 2017, was designed to provide a predictable payment to exonerees while preserving the ability to pursue civil rights claims against individuals and agencies—an approach that, as this ruling shows, can lead to later clawbacks when both streams of compensation cover the same harm.
The legal question before the appeals court was narrow: whether the statute compels reimbursement of the full state award when an exoneree later obtains damages from others. The panel said yes, pointing to legislative language that does not carve out attorney fees or payments to family members from the settlement when determining reimbursement. The opinion referenced the Legislature’s choice not to include exceptions that appear in other Michigan laws dealing with reimbursement, concluding that courts must apply the wrongful-imprisonment statute as written. The decision leaves the original exoneration unchanged and does not affect Ricks’s ability to retain the separate settlement funds beyond the amount necessary to repay the state. According to lawmakers who backed the law, the reimbursement clause was intended to protect the state fund so that money remains available to future claimants whose only compensation may be the statutory payment. “There’s no way in the world I would vote to let someone get that money, and then get 7.5 million,” state Sen. Joe Bellino said, arguing the statute was a bipartisan effort to prevent double recovery.
Outside the courthouse, reactions split along familiar lines. Defense attorneys and innocence advocates said the ruling, while grounded in the statute, highlights a gap between legal remedies and the human cost of wrongful convictions. “No amount of money can make up for a quarter century of your life,” Mueller said, adding that any repayment requirement feels punitive to someone who has already lost so much time. Some lawmakers and state officials countered that the law’s design is straightforward: if an exoneree later collects a larger recovery from those responsible for the injustice, the state’s finite fund should be reimbursed and recycled to others still waiting. Neighbors who followed Ricks’s case recalled his soft-spoken court appearances after release and the photos of him hugging his grown daughters. A West Side resident who sat through hearings in 2017 said the ruling “stings,” but added that “people still need that fund when the city or police don’t settle.”
As of Wednesday, the appeals judgment affirms a trial court order requiring Ricks to reimburse the full amount of his state award. Further appeals are possible, including a request to the Michigan Supreme Court, but no new filings were immediately available. If the ruling stands, the state will seek to recover the money from the earlier award and return it to the compensation fund. For exonerees navigating similar circumstances, the decision signals that a later civil settlement will likely trigger the statute’s payback clause. The next development to watch is whether Ricks seeks review by the state’s high court in early January and whether lawmakers consider clarifying amendments in the upcoming legislative session.
Author note: Last updated December 31, 2025.