Putting broken lives back together
Mike Piaskowski spent five and a half years behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit.
But even after a federal judge overturned the conviction in 2001 due to insufficient evidence, in many ways Piaskowski is still a prisoner of the criminal justice system that freed him.
Piaskowski was convicted in 1995 of participating with five other men in the 1992 murder of Tom Monfils, who disappeared on the job at a Green Bay paper mill. Monfils’ body was found at the bottom of a two-story vat of wood pulp with a 50-pound weight tied to his neck.
Seven years after his exoneration, Piaskowski recalls how his elation quickly evolved into frustration because of insufficient support from the state after his release.
“I lost everything I worked 46 years of my blue-collar life to achieve,” said Piaskowski, now 59. “And I have received nothing from the state. Zero.”
Like many of the 16 people who have been exonerated in Wisconsin, Piaskowski, who worked 22 years at the same mill where Monfils was killed, still is trying to find his way back to the life he knew before his conviction, with little or no guidance from the state.
Wisconsin statute qualifies people wrongfully convicted of crimes, commonly referred to as exonerees, for up to $25,000 in compensation. While the figure is more than what half of the states in the county offer, which is nothing, it ranks last among the 25 states that offer anything.
In addition, Wisconsin provides no educational, professional or emotional assistance to exonerees — measures which parolees often have available, according to John Dipko, spokesperson for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.
While the level of service is dependent on the crime, the state often requires people on parole to seek job training or treatment for addiction.
“They are held accountable under our rules of supervision,” said Dipko. “Exonerees are no longer under our jurisdiction so we cannot do those types of things.”
Because of that fact, Piaskowski received little direction once he became a free man.
“The hardest part is not knowing what to do after you are released,” Piaskowski said. “I was happy to be free initially, but then when it finally sinks in, you ask yourself, ‘What can I do?’ and you don’t know where to turn.”