Businessman Ted White was sentenced to 50 years in prison when he was wrongfully
convicted of molesting his stepdaughter in 2001. He was freed in 2005, but those four years of his life are going to cost the city of Lee's Summit $15.5 million.
In an extremely convoluted case that the AP has a write-up of here, White's now ex-wife Tina McKinley conspired with former detective Richard McKinley to violate White's right to a fair trial. A federal jury granted White $16 million in a wrongful-conviction suit, and Friday Lee's Summit announced that it had agreed to a $15.5 million settlement in exchange for being dropped from that suit, which included the claim that the city and its police department knew about the affair but chose to look the other way.
The former detective hid the affair from the court during White's first trial. He left White's stepdaughter's diary out of the submitted evidence. When the information finally came out, White was granted a second trial in 2004 that ended in a hung jury. A third trial in 2005, partially paid for by secret santa Larry Stewart, finally saw White freed.
