COLUMBUS, Ohio—State officials have approved multimillion-dollar payments to two Northeast Ohio men who each spent years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit.
The agreements are the latest in a series of payments from the state of Ohio to people who spent years, if not decades, behind bars for crimes they were wrongfully convicted of committing.
Joel Covender of Amherst, who spent 11 years in prison after he was wrongfully convicted in 1996 of molesting two children, will get a little more than $1.9 million from the state, under an agreement approved by the Ohio Controlling Board on Monday without discussion or dissent…