Freed Mont. Inmate Still Hopes for College Education

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By Daily Inter Lake

Published: 08/06/2003

Jim Bromgard was having a rough morning recently.
He's worried about paying his phone bill. His girlfriend's Jeep needs work. A stubborn oil filter on his car outlasted his patience. And the State of Montana had let him down again with a broken promise.
It all sounded so good. The state promised Bromgard a college education when he was freed from prison last year after 15 years on false rape charges. But it was a promise without substance, since there is no money to back up the intended reparations for Bromgard.
The Legislature this year passed a measure to provide a state-paid college education to convicts exonerated by DNA testing. There was no money attached, though, and Bromgard, the first man freed by new DNA evidence in Montana, understands the state's promise might not be kept until 2006.
Bromgard, living in Kalispell with a woman he met while in prison, had planned to attend Montana State University-Billings this fall.
He was 18 in 1987 when he was accused of raping a child in Billings. He was freed from prison in October when DNA evidence proved his innocence and cast doubt on a former state medical examiner's testimony in other cases.
Bromgard's struggles illustrate what happens when a teenage boy, through no fault of his own, enters a prison and leaves as a man who is expected to make his way in the world with no skills and no education.
He has had about 30 job interviews, he said, but without a work history or skills, employers aren't interested, Bromgard said. He wants a chance to prove himself. 'I learn fast,' Bromgard said.
He's working a few hours at his girlfriend's parents' business now, but he wants a steady job that pays more than $120 per week.
'I love building stuff. I love working with my hands.'
That's why he wants to study architecture and engineering, he said.
He hasn't given up on the pledge the state made to help him do that.
A privately donated, permanent fund for 'exonerees' has been established and may get Bromgard through a semester or two, he said.
Mike Ross, treasurer of the Montana State University-Billings Foundation Board, put up the first money in the Jimmy R. Bromgard Fund.
''He doesn't need any more disappointments,'' Ross said, according to The Associated Press.
Marilynn Miller, president and chief executive officer of the foundation, said board members had contributed $1,250 by June 30. She hopes to raise at least $5,000 by September.
On Tuesday, Bromgard was a mix of gratitude for the donations, hope for his future and exhaustion from trying to catch up on 15 years of life experience in time to make his life work at age 34.
'I have bills to pay and no money to pay for nothing,' he said,
He's not surprised the state didn't come through for him, he said.
'Their dirty laundry got aired and they don't like it,' he said. 'They're never going to change.'
But Bromgard is no defeatist.
'You can't change the system. You have to change with the system,' he said. 'Life isn't as difficult as everybody makes it seem.
'Things'll work out.'

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