Jefferson County, Kansas, commissioners have agreed to pay $7.5 million to Floyd Bledsoe, who spent 16 years in prison for a murder he did not commit.
The three-person commission voted unanimously last week to approve the settlement, which calls for Bledsoe, 46, to receive an initial payment of $1.5 million with the remainder to be paid out over the next 10 years.
Arrested at age 23, Bledsoe was convicted in 2000 of sexually abusing and murdering a 14-year-old girl named Camille Arfmann in Oskaloosa. That was despite the fact that Bledsoe’s brother, Tom Bledsoe, confessed shortly after the 1999 killing, turned himself in to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, led officers to Arfmann’s buried body and handed over the murder weapon.
Instead of pursuing Tom Bledsoe, investigators “framed” Floyd Bledsoe for the murder, according to the lawsuit he filed in 2016. They “orchestrated” a recantation by Bledsoe’s brother and hid evidence of Floyd Bledsoe’s innocence, his lawyers argued.
In 2015, DNA testing revealed Tom Bledsoe was in fact the likely source of sperm found in the victim. Tom Bledsoe then died by suicide, admitting yet again in his final written words that he killed Arfmann.
“I tried telling the truth but no one would listen,” Tom Bledsoe wrote in his suicide note. “I was told to keep my mouth shut.”
Floyd Bledsoe was freed from prison that year.
Now, the county of about 18,300 people will pay Bledsoe for his wrongful imprisonment.
One of Bledsoe’s attorneys, Russell Ainsworth of Loevy & Loevy in Chicago, called the settlement a “really smart move” by the commissioners. They were facing $40 million in liability if the case went to trial.
“It also recognizes that a grave injustice was committed against an innocent man,” Ainsworth said. “Floyd looks forward to using the compensation to try and put his life back together again.”
But Ainsworth said no amount of money would compensate Bledsoe for being branded a murderer and getting thrown into “the hellhole” of prison for years, during which his children had to grow up without their father.
Commissioner Richard Malm, who represents the county’s Third District, described the settlement amount as “pretty big,” considering the county’s annual budget is roughly $20 million.
Initially, the county offered Bledsoe $3 million, Malm said. They landed on $7.5 million after “a long, long day of negotiations,” he said.
“We’re just going to have to tighten our belts a little bit,” Malm said, noting that the settlement will become a budget item in future years. “If they hadn’t agreed to spread it out over 10 years, we’d have had to float a bond and then pay interest.”
In 2019, Kansas agreed to pay Bledsoe more than $1 million in compensation under a law that makes the wrongly imprisoned eligible to receive $65,000 in compensation for each year they were behind bars.
Last year, another wrongful conviction led to a settlement when Wyandotte County agreed to pay Lamonte McIntyre, who wrongly spent 23 years in prison, $12.5 million after he argued he was framed by former Kansas City, Kansas, detective Roger Golubski.
Since then, Wyandotte County has been sued by the family of Olin “Pete” Coones, who spent 12 years in prison for a crime he did not commit and died months after his 2020 release. That case is pending.