Compensation for injustice: the saying goes that crime doesn't pay. But for those wrongfully convicted and imprisoned, who then are exonerated, the wages of innocence aren't much better

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Oct 1, 2002 | by Timothy W. Maier

Saying sorry sometimes is not good enough. The wrongfully convicted want more than that. They want an equitable payday for the years they spent behind bars for crimes that they did not commit. But a majority of states have no compensation laws on the books and those looking for a check might as well forget it.

With states refusing compensation for injustice, exonerated former death-row inmates Ray Krone of Arizona, Juan Melendez of Florida and Kirk Bloodsworth of Maryland recently urged Congress to take a hard look at how the wrongfully convicted are treated. Melendez, who was sent to death row when police concealed a confession from the real killer, is one of 24 Florida inmates once on death row who have been exonerated. Florida has executed 51 people since 1973. That means the state has released as innocent one death-row inmate for every two it has executed.

Little wonder more than one-half of the U.S. House of Representatives and nearly one-quarter of the U.S. Senate have pledged support for the Innocence Protection Act (HR 912), a bill that would allow DNA testing and upgraded legal counsel for those facing the death penalty. It also would provide funds for states that allow compensation packages for the wrongfully convicted and additional funds for states that require police interrogations to be videotaped.

Consider what Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had to say about the case of Krone, who spent a decade on death row in Arizona for a murder he didn't commit. "DNA evidence pointed squarely to the real killer in that case, a man who went on to sexually assault another woman while Ray Krone served time," Leahy remarked during a summer hearing on reforming the death penalty. "After more than a decade in state prison, Ray Krone got an apology from the prosecutor and $50, and he was sent on his way. Now, the official reporter transcribing this hearing and those watching C-SPAN might not believe what they just heard, so I will repeat it: After wrongfully spending 10 years, three months and nine-and-one-half days in prison, Ray Krone was given the sum of $50 to start his life over."

Compare that with parolees who actually committed the crimes for which they were imprisoned. They receive many taxpayer-paid services from counseling to job leads that enable them to return comfortably back into society. They often are moved humanely from maximum to minimum security, to work release or halfway houses or even home detention. Illinois defense attorney Bob Byman, who in 1996 helped exonerate Dennis Williams, one of four men wrongfully convicted of a brutal murder and sentenced to die in Cook County, put it bluntly: "We help the guilty prisoner more than we help the innocent guy who gets released."

Illinois has in recent years released more exonerated prisoners than it has executed, which prompted Illinois Republican Gov. George Ryan to announce a moratorium of executions and set up a commission that recommended 85 changes in the state's capital-punishment system.

This was triggered when Williams and three others, known as the Ford Heights Four, won a $36 million judgment after proving sheriff's deputies manufactured and concealed evidence. Was this a fair price for Williams' ordeal? Byman is not sure. He says, "Dennis told me that he went to bed every night knowing the state wanted to kill him for a crime he didn't commit."

Even so, such a judgment is rare because state laws make it all but impossible for the innocent to file lawsuits seeking compensation for the years they spent behind bars. Of some 88 inmates who have been exonerated and released because of the work of the New York-based Innocence Project, nearly two-thirds did not receive a dime. A recent review by the Associated Press indicates that 43 of 110 men exonerated received compensation. The compensation ranged from $25,000 in a Texas case to the $36 million civil judgment shared by the Ford Heights Four, who were incarcerated for a combined total of 65 years. Just 13 of the 110 collected $1 million or more from civil lawsuits.

Most find themselves in a similar position to A.B. Butler Jr., who spent more than 16 years in a Texas prison on a rape conviction. He was exonerated and freed in 2000 after DNA evidence proved he did not commit the crime. The state cut him a check for $27,854 for the mistake. With one-third of his life gone, his parents now dead and his marriage over, the value of his time in prison came to $4.60 a day.

"It's unfair," Byman says. "A poor person not only has liberty taken away from them, they have to start over. It's a terrible injustice that we add insult to injury. We compensate ordinary citizens for accidents, such as a $50 million judgment for coffee being spilled on someone's lap or someone being hit by a bus. So why doesn't the state machinery do the same when someone is deprived of their liberty? The political reality is this is a state-by-state decision and, unless Congress makes it a national issue, not many people are going to get compensated."