State Decides Compensation Case for Man Wrongfully Imprisoned for Wallingford Woman's Murder

Kenneth Ireland, an innocent man who spent 21 years in prison for the murder of a Wallingford woman, was awarded $6 million from the state on Thursday and as a result becomes the first person to be compensated for a wrongful incarceration claim in Connecticut since a law was passed nearly seven years ago, according to the Hartford Courant.

Ireland, 44, was sent to prison when he was 18 years old for the 1986 rape and murder of Wallingford’s Barbara Pelkey, a 30-year-old mother of four.

Last July, Ireland recounted those 21 years behind bars to Claims Commissioner J. Paul Vance Jr. during the compensation hearing, in which he sought up to $8 million. During the hearing, Ireland said he always believed he would die in prison before ever being exonerated.

“I was resigned I was going to die in prison, either of old age or more likely, in a violent altercation,” Ireland said, according to CTNewsJunkie.com.

Ireland was in fact eventually exonerated after lawyers with the Connecticut Innocence Project pushed for DNA tests and he was freed in 2009 after the tests proved he wasn’t guilty and Kevin Benefield was identified as the real killer.

In his five-page decision, Vance said that “while this decision attempts to compensate Mr. Ireland for the time that he was wrongfully prisoned, no words or dollar amount will suffice to give him back the time that he lost and the misery he endured,” according to the Hartford Courant.

Ireland was appointed to the state parole board by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy in October.

Read more at the Hartford Courant here.