Joseph E. White didn't live long enough to see most of a $500,000 settlement from the state of Nebraska for serving nearly 20 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.
White, 48, was killed on Sunday moving coal in his native Alabama. He had planned to marry his high school sweetheart in May.
White received $25,000 from Nebraska in compensation last year for being wrongly imprisoned in the 1985 killing of an elderly woman. Legislation to pay him the remaining $475,000 was pending on Tuesday in the Nebraska legislature as part of the annual state claims bill. Also pending is White's federal lawsuit against Gage County officials.
White was the first man in Nebraska to have a murder conviction overturned through DNA evidence. He was released from prison in October 2008 and returned to his home in Alabama. The high school girlfriend to whom he first proposed in 1981 accepted this past Christmas Eve.
The money owed White will be paid to his estate, said Robert Bartle, who was White's lawyer. White's mother and a grown son and daughter are among his survivors.
"It's very, very sad. A very tragic situation," said Bartle.
It was not immediately known if White's heirs could receive the money. His attorney could not be reached for comment.
White was killed while operating a crane at a coal processing plant in Tarrant, Alabama. He left the cab to dislodge a piece of stuck coal and was found crushed between the cab and a catwalk, according to the Jefferson County Coroner's Office.
In 1989, White and five others were charged in the sexual assault and death of 68-year-old Helen Wilson of Beatrice, Neb. White was the only one to maintain his innocence and insist on a jury trial. He was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
The others — James Dean, Kathy Gonzalez, Deb Shelden, Ada JoAnn Taylor and Thomas Winslow — pleaded guilty or no contest to reduced charges. Some of their testimony swayed the jury in White's case.
Nebraska legislation passed in 2001 allowed White to have DNA from the crime scene tested. Results of those tests found no matches for any of those convicted, who became known as the Beatrice Six.
The exonerations based on DNA evidence were the first in state history and were the most nationally in a single case.
Investigators now say the real killer was an Oklahoma City man, Bruce Allen Smith, who died in 1992.
"I knew I was innocent," White said after his release. "When it comes to the truth, you never stop fighting."