The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals said it won’t delay a jury’s decision against Gage County, awarding $28 million to six people falsely accused of raping and murdering a Beatrice woman in 1985. The “Beatrice 6” collectively spent years in prison before they were exonerated.
The decision came Tuesday, a week after the appellate court denied the county’s petition to rehear its appeal in the case in which six people sued over what a jury in Lincoln in 2016 determined was a reckless investigation that violated their rights and sent them to prison for another man’s crime.
In a one-sentence order, the 8th Circuit said simply: “The motion to stay the issuance of the mandate is denied.”
It wasn’t immediately clear how quickly Gage County must begin to pay the verdict.
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