Curious Iowa: How do inmates pay restitution?

The bodies of Maria Lehner, 27, and Laura Watson-Dalton, 29, were found 25 years ago this week — on Mar. 19, 1999 — after a fire started in the Iowa City apartment where Jonathan Memmer had bludgeoned them both to death.

When Memmer was sentenced to life in prison in 2001, he was also ordered to pay $150,000 to the families of each woman, for a total of $300,000 in restitution. Decades later, Memmer has only paid back a small fraction of that sum.

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“I would be surprised if it’s been even $1,000,” said Diane Watson, Watson-Dalton’s sister.

How does someone who is serving a life sentence — or two, in Memmer’s case — pay restitution when most jobs available for prisoners in Iowa pay less than $1 an hour?

That’s what one person wondered when they wrote to Curious Iowa, a series from The Gazette that answers questions about the state, its culture and the people who live here.

How do people sentenced to life sentences pay restitution?

The short answer is they usually don’t, at least not in full.

According to Iowa Department of Corrections regulations, an incarcerated individual who is required to pay restitution will be presented with a payment plan shortly after their arrival in prison. The plan considers the person’s financial resources, physical and mental health, education, employment, family circumstances and other legal obligations.

A standard plan deducts 20 percent of revenue that enters an inmate’s bank account — whether from an in-prison job or from other sources, like money sent by family — to pay restitution.

The amount deducted can vary based on the various conditions considered as part of the plan and can be as high as 50 percent. Inmates can present opposition to the original plan if they believe their circumstances were not considered appropriately.

A few revenue sources are exempt from deduction, including refunds from outside vendors, property tort claims of less that $100, Veterans Affairs benefits, and money that is sent specifically to pay for telephone use, medical costs, transportation fees for work release, or funeral costs.

The money deducted from the prisoner’s account is sent quarterly to the clerk of court in the county where the individual was convicted, and the clerk of court then sends those funds to the victims.

The money collected for restitution usually doesn’t amount to much. According to a report released by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2022, most Iowa inmates make between 28 and 95 cents per hour, and not all inmates have jobs or work full-time.

For Watson-Dalton’s family, that translated into quarterly checks for less than $10 that served more as a painful reminder than any useful amount of money.

Diane Watson wasn’t the direct recipient of the restitution funds until her mother died in October. As the executor of her mom’s estate, she’s still working on filing the proper paperwork to get the checks sent to her rather than her deceased parents. Going through her parents’ finances after her mother’s death, she often came across checks for $2, $3, or $4. The most recent check sent to her mom was a large one — about $7.

“For a while, my mom said she’d rather it didn’t come, because it was just a painful reminder every time,” Watson said.

Watson said she’s hoping to set up a automatic deposit to send the money directly to a scholarship fund that the family set up on behalf of her sister, something she and her mom had talked about doing but had never gotten around to.

“I think it seems largely symbolic,” Watson said. “I wonder if it’s more of a reminder to him. I don’t know. It’s hard to say. I don’t know him, obviously.”

Restitution often goes unpaid, even after release from prison

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Victim restitution payments are very seldom paid in full, even by offenders who are not sentenced to life in prison, said Anastasia Basquin, the victim liaison and community outreach specialist for the Linn County Attorney’s Office.

Part of Basquin’s job is to work with victims who reach out to let her know they haven’t been receiving restitution payments. After an offender is released from prison, they are supposed to make a restitution plan with the county that involves regular monthly payments, but there isn’t a specific timeline for when the restitution must be paid in full.

“If they stop paying, then the victims will normally call me and let me know that they’re not receiving payment. Then we could file what’s called a ‘show cause’ for failure to pay, which is kind of like a contempt of court,” Basquin said.

The offender can be called back to court to answer the show cause, which is not a new criminal charge, but rather a contempt action under the original case number.

After a few show causes, Basquin said she can ask the court to require the offender to serve a few additional days in jail. Aside from that, there isn’t much consequence for not paying restitution.

Basquin said that sometimes offenders will start to make regular payments after the first show cause, but others are a constant battle.

“It just keeps going and going until they get it all paid off or until the victims give up,” Basquin said. “I would say that it’s a big problem that we have, making victims financially whole.”

Victims who faced financial difficulties as a result of a crime aren’t totally out of luck, however. The Iowa Attorney General’s Office runs a Crime Victim Compensation Program that can pay victims back for things like medical bills, lost wages, counseling and funeral expenses.

“If a victim has any sort of expenses that would qualify for that program, we always refer them to that program because that’s a way for them to get paid upfront,” Basquin said.

“We try to make it as clear as we can to people that, first off, you’re not going to get any (restitution) payments while the case is pending, and cases can be pending from three months to years … Once the case is done, then it’s still a very slow process to try to get reimbursed.”

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Comments: (319) 398-8328; emily.andersen@thegazette.com