'We have to do right by people': New law updates compensation for the wrongfully convicted
KFOR has have been reporting on Simmons' case for more than 20 years.
In 2023, when he was finally released from prison, the state of Oklahoma allowed for $175,000 for victims of wrongful incarceration.
For Simmons, that was less than $10 a day for the time he served behind bars for a crime he didn't do.
This week, a bill to provide more compensation for Oklahomans who were served long sentences after wrongful incarceration became law.
Phuong Cao fled communist Vietnam to build a better life for his family in America.
They came to Oklahoma City for a fresh start in the early 1980s. Cao and his wife, worked multiple jobs to support their five children.
In 1991, he was falsely accused and wrongfully convicted.
His second oldest daughter, Trang Green, was in the first grade when her father disappeared.
'My mom didn't say anything,' Green remembered. 'She just cried and cried and days went by and like, dad's not home. Something happened to dad, but mom was not saying anything. Then finally my mom took us to a big red building downtown behind a glass window with my dad in a in a jumpsuit. And we're like, what's going like, what's going on?'
Cao spent almost ten years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.
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After his release in 2001, his family fought to prove his innocence, and they did.
Cao's accuser recanted her allegation. It was a lie.
'Not only did he suffer, but we all suffered. I don't think a lot of people realize,' Green said. 'And because he was an immigrant, he had a check in with ICE every year, and he was on the deportation list still for something he didn't do. He couldn't even go bury his own father (in Vietnam) while he was fighting for his right to exonerate himself.'
Cao is one of 44 oklahomans found to be wrongfully convicted.
About half have sought compensation, capped at $175,000.
'Nobody would take $175,000 for ten years of your children's life. Nobody would take that,' said Green.
She reached out to her her State Representative, Cyndi Munson (D-Oklahoma City), to talk about a solution for family's like hers.
According to an interim study Munson requested years ago, all of the neighboring states around Oklahoma provide compensation tied to the number of years served.
'What's going on in states around Oklahoma? Kansas, Missouri, Texas, Colorado, all do it better,' Munson said.
And so, she wrote bill to update Oklahoma's wrongful conviction compensation, which hasn't changed in 20 years.
$12.59 billion Oklahoma budget bill heads to governor's desk
'We want to provide compensation that has some dignity because we've taken all of your life opportunities away and taking you away from your family and your community, and we're going to make that right,' she said.
Munson's bill, HB 2235, has bipartisan authors and support and provides $50,000 a year for every year of wrongful incarceration, an additional $50,000 a year for time on death row and $25,000 a year for years on parole.
Offenders who previously pleaded guilty to a crime, but are later found to be innocent, remain eligible for compensation.
'So it's a huge win for criminal justice reform for Oklahomans and quite frankly, for justice in Oklahoma,' she said. 'This is what Oklahomans are looking for; solve problems of everyday people and find ways to work together, even if you are on different sides of the aisle.'
Phuong Cao actually never filed for compensation.
The law is not retroactive. For him, it's too late.
Almost four decades after he was wrongly accused, after exoneration and naturalization, Cao was finally able to obtain an American passport and travel to Vietnam to see the family he left behind.
'We're talking almost 40 years that he hasn't hugged his mother, and he finally got to do it like three summers ago.
It was a tearful, new chapter in this family 40 year long nightmare.
Governor Kevin Stitt line-item vetoed two portions of this measure: a mechanism to pay for college tuition and health insurance for the wrongfully convicted.
Munson vows to continue to work on those efforts next session.
The new law goes into effect July 1.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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