Family of late Wilmington 10 members seek NC money

RALEIGH, NC (AP) — The families of late members of the wrongly convicted group known as the Wilmington 10 say they should be treated like the surviving members and receive payments from North Carolina because their relatives were imprisoned in the 1970s.

Six have been awarded compensation totaling $1 million by the state Industrial Commission. But the state Attorney General’s Office says family members of the other four do not meet compensation qualifications. The Insider news service reported Thursday that lawyers for four families argued they should not be treated differently.

In 2012, then-Gov. Bev Perdue pardoned the Wilmington 10, who were imprisoned for the 1971 firebombing of a grocery store. Their sentences were commuted in 1978.

State law allows $50,000 payments for each year someone pardoned was wrongly imprisoned, capped at $750,000.

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