By Lee A. Daniels

How much is 27 years of a man’s life worth?

Is it worth $2.2 million?

That’s a question Michael Anthony Green, of Houston, Texas, is pondering now? $2.2 million in exchange for giving up his search for how what happened to him happened.

What happened to Michael Anthony Green 27 years ago was that, at age 18, he was arrested and convicted of rape and sentenced to 75 years in prison.

Michael Anthony Green

Now, two decades after Green began a determined quest to prove his innocence; two years after the then-new Harris County (Tex.) prosecutor established a unit to investigate inmates’ claims of innocence; eighteen months after those investigators discovered crucial evidence that could be tested for DNA samples; and two weeks after a Texas state court judge effectively overturned his conviction and released him from prison, the state has offered Green the deal:

A $2.2-million compensation payment in exchange for not filing a civil lawsuit to dig into the conduct of the investigation that put him in prison.

At first thought, $2.2 million seems a lot of money. But is it really just compensation for the shame of going to prison, for the taking away of freedom, for the exposure to the dangers of prison life, for having to live with the fact that the fact of your innocence – the truth – did not count?

In the years since the revealing of wrongful convictions became a commonplace – and damning – comment on the American system of justice, there have been numerous multi-million compensation payments, settlements, and jury awards to the wrongfully convicted.

Last week a man who spent 24 years in prison in California for a murder he didn’t commit, settled out of court with the city of Long Beach, California for $7.95 million, It is the largest pretrial settlement for a wrongful conviction ever in the state, according to his attorney.

In early June in New York City a man who was framed by a corrupt police detective and spent 19 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit received $9.9 million from the city government – the largest personal settlement in city history.

Still, the question looms. What is the meaning and the scale of justice for this special group of Americans – the guilty until proven innocent?

While searching for his own answer to that question last week, Michael Anthony Green told a reporter for the New York Times, “What I really need to do is to make them pay for what they done to me. Two-point-two-million dollars is nothing when it comes to 27 years of my life, which I spent with mental torture and physical abuse.”

Lee A. Daniels is Director of Communications for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Editor In Chief of TheDefendersOnline.com