Not to convict the wrong people would be even better
Righting Old Wrongs
Tuesday, October 12, 2004; Page A22
INMATES WHOSE wrongful convictions are reversed in Alabama on the grounds that they are innocent are lucky in more ways than one. In addition to regaining their freedom, state law requires that they be awarded at least $50,000 for each year of their incarceration. But pity those whose wrongful convictions are dismissed on the basis of innocence in Texas. Before they can collect a dime from the state, they will need the endorsement of the very same district attorney's office that prosecuted them in the first place. Advocates for the wrongfully convicted, who only recently noticed that this provision had been slipped into the law, doubt that Lone Star prosecutors will be eager to publicize their errors.
The increasingly widespread use of DNA tests in criminal cases has uncovered an expanding pool of people who suffer most when justice fails -- the unjustly convicted -- and has focused attention on the laws that determine how to indemnify them. According to the Innocence Project at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, 151 former convicts have been exonerated by genetic testing in the past 15 years. [P6: Yes, I stretched the meaning of "exonerate" considerably]
…At the very least, other states should tackle the question of how to indemnify a person who has lost years of his life behind bars. The underlying issues are loaded: How much, and under what circumstances, should a state pay to right these old wrongs? But by failing even to try to answer those questions, the government compounds an already profound injustice.
