© Provided by CBS Broadcasting Inc.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — A Maryland board has approved paying about $9 million to compensate five men who were wrongly imprisoned for a combined 120 years.

The Maryland Board of Public Works voted Wednesday for the compensation.

The men will be paid $78,916 for each year they were incarcerated. That amounts to the state’s median household income.

Maryland judges and prosecutors have found that petitioners Jerome Johnson, Lamar Johnson, Walter Lomax, Clarence Shipley and Hubert James Williams are innocent. Some petitions filed by attorneys have been pending for over a year.

Treasurer Nancy Kopp, who is one of the three board members, described the payments as “a very small token and heartfelt apologies of the state and all of our citizens.”

(© Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)