No seat at the table: The invisible victims of Detroit’s bankruptcy

In prison, Provience earned his GED, became certified in custodial maintenance and completed courses in subjects like decontamination. He worked out often, finding that lifting weights helped him physically and emotionally. At the same time, he continued to appeal his case on his own.

Every appeal he made was denied, but in early 2009, eight years into his sentence, Provience's luck changed.

The University of Michigan Innocence Clinic, which deals with some of the hardest convictions to exonerate: ones in which there's no DNA to test, took on his case.

In a matter of months, the clinic’s law students uncovered a barrage of damning evidence that revealed wrongdoing and cover-ups from the very beginning of the Hunter murder investigation. The clinic also tracked down Wiley, who said he was dying of cancer and wanted to set the record straight.

In a video recorded by the clinic, Wiley was asked if he could explain what happened on March 24, 2000, the date of Hunter's murder. "No, I couldn't," he replied. "I wasn't there." He also made another startling charge: He said he was coached by the Detroit police officer leading the homicide investigation.

Wiley's about-face was significant, but the real smoking gun was the police progress notes that detailed who the police really suspected had killed Hunter: a family-run drug gang.

These notes were never shared with Provience's defense team at trial. His civil attorney, Wolfgang Mueller, said the police didn't share the notes with the prosecution either.

"Frankly, if the prosecutor had seen it, the prosecutor would have dismissed the case. That's how powerful that was," Mueller explained.

The suppression of the progress notes alone was enough for a judge to throw out Provience's conviction in November 2009.

It was Orr's decision to file for bankruptcy last July, and he has until the fall to come up with a plan enough involved parties can agree on before he could be removed from the position.

The city is in mediation with pensioner and bondholder groups to hammer out a plan of adjustment that makes strategic cuts that affect the city's unsecured creditors. And under tentative settlements, subject to approval by U.S. bankruptcy court Judge Steven Rhodes, certain creditors stand to lose much more than others.

If they accept the plan, police officers and firefighters could get 100 percent of their pensions.  After eliminating cost of living adjustments, civilian employees could get 95.5 percent. And in exchange for signing on to the plan, certain bond insurers will get 74 percent of what they are owed.

But as the city's plan stands now, creditors with lawsuits against the city could get as little as 20 percent of judgments that they have already been awarded or would get through the bankruptcy mediation process.

These lawsuits cover everything from police abuse and wrongful death to employment discrimination and personal injury.

At least 90 of them are civil rights claims.

"These are folks who are often in disfavored classes and categories, people who've been in prison, like Mr. Provience," said Bill Goodman, a lawyer who represents four civil rights claims affected by the bankruptcy.

"The system is in favor of the powerful and the wealthy and to some extent the labor unions. And there's little pressure to help regular, ordinary individuals whose rights have been violated."

Unlike every other class of creditors, tort claimants don't have their own committee to represent their interests in the bankruptcy. That leaves them with only their lawyers, who aren't bankruptcy experts, to fight for them.

"Right now we have pieces of paper essentially that need to be converted into monetary damages for Jessie," explained Mark Bernstein, who heads the firm representing Payne. "It's uncharted territory for virtually everybody involved in this."

These suits won't be resolved in court, at least not at first; they'll be determined through a process the city chose known as alternative dispute resolution (ADR).

Through the mediation process, whether a case has a fixed amount attached to it, like Payne's, or not, like Provience's, each suit will have a case evaluation and binding arbitration with several mediators. If arbitration ultimately fails, the case will go into litigation. Whatever the final outcome, each tort creditor, as the plan stands now, would only get about 20 percent of the decided amount.

For Payne, that means going through the ADR process and potentially only getting about $600,000 of the $3.5 million she was owed.

Bernstein believes it's inherently unfair.

"Jessie Payne is not a sophisticated Wall Street bank, or large bondholder," he said. "She's a woman who was walking in a parking lot, got hit by a city bus and deserves to be paid for it."

Other creditors groups, like banks, bondholders and pension funds, have all been blamed for contributing to Detroit's decline, but tort creditors argue they didn't do anything to harm the city; the city harmed them.

Despite repeated requests, the city's legal representation at the Jones Day law firm did not comment on the cases.

Dwayne Provience's story also has another costly twist.

When he was sent to prison, the state mistakenly continued to bill him for child support.

"The only time they cut it off, I think, it was like eight and a half years [into] when I was in prison," he said. "At that time, I was almost $100,000 in debt in child support."

But under Michigan law, if Provience gets any compensation, he will still have to pay that amount. So his only hope is to get what he feels the city owes him.

His message for Detroit's emergency manager is a simple one.

"I know he's doing a job that he has to do to get this city back up and viable, and I applaud him for that," he said. "But if I could speak to Kevyn Orr, I would just let him know, 'Give us a little more meat on the bone, so we can feel vindicated for what we went through.'"