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Post by happyhaddock on Jan 24, 2008 17:17:21 GMT -5
why are looks so important? Regarldess of looks they are still murder victims a family should have the right to speak on behalf of their loved one. I also hope that you guys are not implying that regardless of victim impact statements or not that a murder victim is not important because they are. ... But that's what happens - those without friends or relatives are given less 'justice' than others. Is that fair?
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Post by happyhaddock on Jan 23, 2008 22:08:41 GMT -5
I'm not opposed to victim impact statements. I think it gives the family a chance to tell the defendent what they took away. I feel it gives the family away to vent their anger and fustration out to the defendent: without taking the law into their own hands so to speak. Why should the killers of 'cute' people be punished more than those who kill the not so attractive?
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Post by happyhaddock on Oct 23, 2007 17:14:13 GMT -5
I'm not quite certain how I feel about the death penalty... I've never been exposed to either a crime 'befitting' this punishment, nor have I ever been exposed to a person who was given the death penalty. The one thing which would make me tend to 'accept' the death penalty is the VERY REAL possibility that a maniac would serve 10-20-30 years... fall through the cracks, let loose into the world... and then begin to kill others. So, if not death... then what? In my humble opinion, the only very real alternative would be to dedicate a facility for 'complete and total life terms', and 'no chance of EVER even being considered for parole'. I understand the prisons in the States are over-run, crowded, under-funded, under-staffed, and over-utilized... but this should in no way affect the heart wrenching tragedies of not only the victims of the horrendous crimes being committed... but the additional murders of others as well... Please, what do you think? Without the death penalty there would be money to ensure the prisons aren't over-run, crowded, under-funded, under-staffed, and over-utilized. It's an easy thing for lazy politicians to do to get elected - support the death penalty. Only those who are involved know how completely compromised the process is and how expensive.
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Post by happyhaddock on Oct 19, 2007 19:49:55 GMT -5
Someone know what is a '3.850 Motion for post conviction relief' ?? I try to find the definition, without success yet. And what's the difference between the 3.850 and 3.851 motion ? Help me please ! In Florida? Motion for post-conviction relief
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Post by happyhaddock on Oct 19, 2007 19:52:43 GMT -5
I understand that all the evidence from my penpal's trial, has been lost in the period since his conviction and incarceration 22 years ago. I am assuming that this means in the event of his original conviction being ruled say as 'unsafe' (unsure what the equivalent US term for this would be??), a re-trial might not be an option and if it is one, then how is the case to be re-tried? His appeal lawyer suggests that inadequate assistance from counsel as well as failure to produce evidence in mitigation are just two of thirty potential issues upon which the appeal is based. How can a jury be expected to determine on a re-trial without sufficient evidence to deal with the issues? Some DA's are such skilled liars and so without conscience that they will often get a conviction with no evidence, on BS alone.
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Post by happyhaddock on Oct 4, 2007 19:03:31 GMT -5
Hi, This is my first post after logging into ccadp for a number of years. Where do I find out about case information, not just the one or two sentences that are posted but full court room documentation? ... You can't. By law, you are supposed to be able to purchase the information for a modest fee, however the services who sell it are resisting this and insist on charging large fees for access to it. This is from PWC Consulting: - Greetings! We have more information about the laws that govern court reporters selling their transcripts, some trivia, and some analysis of the Scott Peterson case. Distribution and sale of Transcripts If, as reported in our last issue, Court Reporters do not own their work product, the transcripts, why are they able to sell them? More importantly, why do they think they control access and distribution? The answer is simple. States have passed laws giving court reporters the right to sell the transcripts they produce. I have not looked into all states, but I have researched the justification California uses for allowing court reporters to sell their product, even though their salaries are paid out of the public coffers and court recordings are public records. This justification is explained in Bill Number AB 582, introduced on February 21, 2007 and amended on April 10, 2007. SECTION 1. The Legislature finds and declares all of the following: (a) Official court reporters and court reporters pro tempore employed by the courts are currently paid under a dual compensation structure in which the base salary of the court reporter is supplemented by income from preparing required transcripts and providing other required transcription services. (b) The dual compensation structure protects the state from bearing the full cost of transcript preparation and other transcription services and avoids the resulting consequences of overtime liability related to these services. (d) In order to ensure full and fair compensation of official court reporters and court reporters pro tempore employed by the court, and in order to attract and retain official court reporters and court reporters pro tempore employed by the courts that have sufficient skills and competence to serve the needs of the justice system, it is imperative that the system of dual compensation provide sufficient payment for transcription services. Obviously, charging for the transcripts is intended to generate income for the court reporters, not just cover their costs. Two questions immediately come up. First, just how much do court reporters make for base salary? Second, how much income can they legally generate from the sale of transcripts? To answer the first question, let's look at some published recruitments for Court Reporters in 2 counties in California which had recent high profile cases: San Mateo and Contra Costa. A December 2005 recruiting ad for Superior Court, San Mateo County, posted a salary of $5,760 - $7,200 monthly. That equates to an annual salary range of $69,120-$86,400. Source For Contra Costa County, a 2006 recruiting ad posted the salary range for Superior Court court reporters at $65,754-$82,970. These positions are county positions, so they come with full benefits. To answer the second question, we go back to California Code. Sections 69941-69958 govern the production and sale of transcripts. 69950. (a) The fee for transcription for original ribbon or printed copy is eighty-five cents ($0.85) for each 100 words, and for each copy purchased at the same time by the court, party, or other person purchasing the original, fifteen cents ($0.15) for each 100 words. (b) The fee for a first copy to any court, party, or other person who does not simultaneously purchase the original shall be twenty cents ($0.20) for each 100 words, and for each additional copy, purchased at the same time, fifteen cents ($0.15) for each 100 words. As for controlling distribution and access, yes, the State has given them that power, too. 69954. (d) Any court, party, or person who has purchased a transcript may, without paying a further fee to the reporter, reproduce a copy or portion thereof as an exhibit pursuant to court order or rule, or for internal use, but shall not otherwise provide or sell a copy or copies to any other party or person. The terrible irony is that the sale of transcripts is intended to save the State money. The result is quite the opposite, because it is the Courts that have to bear much of the expense. In an analysis of the sought for 30 cent per 100 word increase in the cost of the transcripts, "the Trial Courts' Consolidated Legislation Committee (TCCLC) comments that 'by increasing the rate for original reporter transcripts by $0.30 for each 100 words, this bill would cost over $3.1 million in fees for transcripts that the courts are required to purchase from their own court reporters'." "The Judicial Council also notes that current law requires the courts in criminal cases to obtain an original certified transcript of the proceedings for the court, and to provide copies to the parties, the cost of which is borne by the court. The Judicial Council therefore notes that the changes to the fee schedule . . . 'represent an increase in transcription costs of 17.4 percent at a statewide cost to the courts of as much as $5 to $7.5 million annually'." Folks, that's just the cost of the proposed 30 cent fee increase. Multiply that by 2.83 to get the annual cost imposed on the Courts by the 85 cent per 100 word fee -- $14 to $21 million annually. I can't think of any way to say how ridiculous this is in language fit for a public newsletter.
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Post by happyhaddock on Aug 22, 2007 11:14:41 GMT -5
www.vatican.va/phome_en.htmAs he has made clear, the Holy Father objects to the use of the death penalty. The URL above is a starting point for the Vatican and any contacts you may wish to make.
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Post by happyhaddock on Aug 17, 2007 16:38:55 GMT -5
Don't rush to execution << LINK
California must reject the U.S. attorney general's effort to bend death penalty rules.
By Erwin ChemerinskyAugust 16, 2007Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales is about to adopt an unnecessary and mean-spirited regulation that will make it harder for those on death row to have their cases reviewed in federal court. State Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown should make clear that California wants no part of this. To understand what's going on here, you need a little background. Let's say you were convicted of murder in California. Generally, as soon as you have exhausted your appeals in state court, the clock starts ticking: You have one year to file a petition for habeas corpus in federal court. (A writ of habeas corpus is a request for federal court review of a conviction on grounds that a person is imprisoned in violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States.) That one-year timeline was set by the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, adopted in 1996. But that law also allows a shorter time limit -- six months -- in death penalty cases. Why less time for death penalty cases? It seems perverse, but Congress was actually trying to encourage states to provide lawyers for those on death row. The Constitution guarantees the right to an attorney at trial when you're facing imprisonment or death and when you appeal your conviction at the state level. Beyond that, you're on your own. But the proceedings that come next -- collectively called "collateral review" -- can be crucial. It's at this stage, which includes habeas corpus petitions, that serious flaws in trial are often exposed, including the kind of mistakes that lead to the execution of innocent people. Almost no states provide counsel in these crucial proceedings. So the 1996 law laid out this deal: If a state starts providing lawyers to capital defendants, it will get the benefit of a shorter, six-month statute of limitations. So far, only Arizona has complied. Other states have decided that it's not worth the expense. Enter Gonzales and the Patriot Act. When it reauthorized the Patriot Act last year, Congress added a little-noticed provision that lets the attorney general, rather than federal judges, decide whether states are complying with the 1996 law. No one paid much attention, until now. Gonzales, it has been widely reported, is about to certify California and other states as being in compliance with the 1996 law, in essence just giving them the six-month statute of limitations. But these states have done nothing that this law requires. Everywhere but Arizona, death row inmates still have to pay for their attorneys (unlikely), get pro bono representation (difficult) or represent themselves (unwise). Any "certification" is a lie. Those who favor the shorter statute of limitations are frustrated by the long delays before executions are carried out. But Gonzales' move is not about preventing delays; at most, it speeds things up by six months. It is about preventing some inmates from having a habeas corpus petition heard at all. Death row prisoners will still be without free attorneys, trying to file habeas corpus petitions on their own. But that process is rife with complex rules and technicalities. The U.S. Supreme Court, for instance, ruled this year that the habeas clock is ticking even while an inmate is asking for the high court to review state post-conviction proceedings. So inmates have to file both requests at the same time. All of this creates serious pitfalls even for well-informed and highly diligent prisoners. Six months leaves little room for error. Undoubtedly, many more habeas petitions, including highly meritorious ones, will wind up dismissed, deemed too late. We now know of more than a dozen innocent people whose convictions were overturned on a writ of habeas corpus in recent years. Last year, John Grisham published a bestselling nonfiction book about one: Ron Williamson, whose death sentence in Oklahoma was overturned by a federal judge. Shortening the statute of limitations risks that others like him will never get their day in court. Gonzales' certification can be challenged before a federal appeals court in Washington. But it shouldn't have to go that far. Brown should make clear that California will not invoke the six-month statute of limitations, no matter what Gonzales does.
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Post by happyhaddock on Aug 13, 2007 23:19:33 GMT -5
Vernell Crittendon: Spokesman for Death Speaks for Himself << LINKFriday, August 03, 2007Exciting times over at the ACLU blog. Here's an interesting entry:The New Yorker, a magazine well-known for publishing fiction, recently ran a story about a subject that is all too real. State-sponsored killing. The article is about Vernell Crittendon, the recently retired spokesperson for San Quentin State Prison in California. According to his job description, Crittendon was responsible for dealing with the condemned person before his execution and informing the press about the killing. As a matter of fact, he was responsible for just about everything related to California capital punishment process. In some ways, Crittendon's story parallels that of a person convicted of a capital crime. The article reports that as a prison guard, he had done some terrible things. As a young corrections officer, he was responsible for beating black inmates under orders from white supervisors. The most important trait shared by people on death row and Crittendon is the recognition that this final punishment does not need to continue. Even though he attempted to be detached from the execution process, Crittendon, who witnessed 13 executions, saw the senseless, pointless suffering. When Manny Babbitt, a Vietnam veteran who saved a life of a fellow soldier, was put to death, Crittendon thought, "Poor Manny." ( Manny Babbitt's story can be seen on Freedom Files: Freedom to Live on ACLU.tv). He also recognized some of the factors that explain why many death-row inmates committed their crimes, stating: "I would never have chosen for my legacy, 'He put to death people who grew up in terrible, deprived circumstances and didn't have much chance.'" Crittendon also witnessed the problems of carrying out the punishment. He watched as the gas chamber was ruled as cruel and unusual in California. He retired as the debate over the cruelty of lethal injection continues in California and elsewhere in the country. In fact, he saw how some inmates, including Manny Babbitt, suffer because of that flawed method. Most of all, Vernell Crittendon, like many death row inmates, seeks redemption. He has participated in programs that try to keep youngsters out of prison. To reach this goal, he used inmates to talk to at-risk youth. He has learned that a person cannot be judged by a single bad deed. As he struggles to "make sense of this thing," Crittendon comes to the conclusion many of us do — it is not possible to make sense of it. The story closes with Crittendon speaking in the third person as if to be further separated from the issue. He says, "if someone were to tell me tomorrow, 'Vernell there will be no more executions in the state of California,' Vernell would not be sad.'" He speaks for many of us with that statement.
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Post by happyhaddock on Aug 16, 2007 0:02:31 GMT -5
www.hbo.com/autopsy/baden/qa2006.htmlOf all your cases, which one haunts you to this day and why?There is one particular case that haunts me and that's where an innocent man was convicted for a murder that was a natural death. It wasn't that a person was murdered and they got the wrong person. This person is still in jail in Massachusetts for killing his wife. They were having a friendly divorce and during the course of the divorce, the wife was found dead at home face down. And the medical examiner did the autopsy and found an infection in the heart-an acute massive myocarditis. And the medical examiner felt that this was an actual death. The brother of the dead woman was a prosecutor. He felt that the brother-in-law killed his sister. And he kept harassing and calling his buddy the prosecutor, saying, I know he killed her. They finally sent this out to other people. And two years later he was arrested for suffocating her on the basis of the maroon discoloration that one can get from strangulation. When you strangle somebody they can become cyanotic and bluish. When I was asked to review it, the problem was that there wasn't just a cyanosis in the face which is what happens in strangulation. The whole body was blue. And it was blue because this was not evidence of strangulation. It was just a normal color of death, the lividity. And although I testified in that case for the defense, there was a very vigorous prosecution and prosecutor, very passionate, very wrong. And the jury found, found him guilty and he's still in jail. Kitty73990: What has been your most puzzling unsolved case?Dr. Baden: The most upsetting cases are those persons that I think have been wrongly convicted. There was a puzzling case in Boston involving a man named Roy McGraw who was convicted of killing his wife. I had reviewed all the autopsy findings and microscopic slides and clearly she died of a massive infection of the heart and I so testified in court. But the jury found him guilty of murder, which had never occurred. When a person dies of natural causes but someone is convicted of a murder, this really upsets me and has to do often with the over-zealousness of prosecutors. There are occasionally wrongful convictions, and if DNA is involved that can sometimes help exonerate the individual. But in 85 percent of murders, there's no DNA involved.
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Post by happyhaddock on Aug 13, 2007 22:47:28 GMT -5
Intentional, willful, malicious prosecutions << LINK Tuesday, August 07, 2007 An interesting op-ed in the New York Times draws the distinction between innocent mistakes and willful prosecutorial misconduct: The Presence of MaliceBy RICHARD MORAN South Hadley, Mass.LAST week, Judge Nancy Gertner of the Federal District Court in Boston awarded more than $100 million to four men whom the F.B.I. framed for the 1965 murder of Edward Deegan, a local gangster. It was compensation for the 30 years the men spent behind bars while agents withheld evidence that would have cleared them and put the real killer — a valuable F.B.I. informant, by the name of Vincent Flemmi — in prison. Most coverage of the story described it as a bizarre exception in the history of law enforcement. Unfortunately, this kind of behavior by those whose sworn duty it is to uphold the law is all too common. In state courts, where most death sentences are handed down, it occurs regularly. My recently completed study of the 124 exonerations of death row inmates in America from 1973 to 2007 indicated that 80, or about two-thirds, of their so-called wrongful convictions resulted not from good-faith mistakes or errors but from intentional, willful, malicious prosecutions by criminal justice personnel. (There were four cases in which a determination could not be made one way or another.) Yet too often this behavior is not singled out and identified for what it is. When a prosecutor puts a witness on the stand whom he knows to be lying, or fails to turn over evidence favorable to the defense, or when a police officer manufactures or destroys evidence to further the likelihood of a conviction, then it is deceptive to term these conscious violations of the law — all of which I found in my research — as merely mistakes or errors. Mistakes are good-faith errors — like taking the wrong exit off the highway, or dialing the wrong telephone number. There is no malice behind them. However, when officers of the court conspire to convict a defendant of first-degree murder and send him to death row, they are doing much more than making an innocent mistake or error. They are breaking the law. Perhaps this explains why, even when a manifestly innocent man is about to be executed, a prosecutor can be dead set against reopening an old case. Since so many wrongful convictions result from official malicious behavior, prosecutors, policemen, witnesses or even jurors and judges could themselves face jail time for breaking the law in obtaining an unlawful conviction. Strangely, our misunderstanding of the real cause underlying most wrongful convictions is compounded by the very people who work to uncover them. Although the term “wrongfully convicted” is technically correct, it also has the potential to be misleading. It leads to the false impression that most inmates ended up on death row because of good-faith mistakes or errors committed by an imperfect criminal justice system — not by malicious or unlawful behavior. For this reason, we need to re-frame the argument and shift our language. If a death sentence is overturned because of malicious behavior, we should call it for what it is: an unlawful conviction, not a wrongful one.
In the interest of fairness, it is important to note that those who are exonerated are not necessarily innocent of the crimes that sent them to death row. They have simply had their death sentences set aside because of errors that led to convictions, usually involving the intentional violation of their constitutional right to a fair and impartial trial. Very seldom does the court go the next step and actually declare them innocent. In addition, some of these unlawful convictions resulted from criminal justice officials trying to do the right thing. (A police officer, say, plants evidence on a defendant he is convinced is guilty, fearing that the defendant will escape punishment otherwise.) In cases like these, officers or prosecutors have been known to “frame a guilty man.” The malicious or even well-intentioned manipulation of murder cases by prosecutors and the police underscores why it’s important to discard, once and for all, the nonsense that so-called wrongful convictions can be eliminated by introducing better forensic science into the courtroom.Even if we limit death sentences to cases in which there is “conclusive scientific evidence” of guilt, as Mitt Romney, the presidential candidate and former governor of Massachusetts has proposed, we will still not eliminate the problem of wrongful convictions. The best trained and most honest forensic scientists can only examine the evidence presented to them; they cannot be expected to determine if that evidence has been planted, switched or withheld from the defense.The cause of malicious unlawful convictions doesn’t rest solely in the imperfect workings of our criminal justice system — if it did we might be able to remedy most of it. A crucial part of the problem rests in the hearts and souls of those whose job it is to uphold the law. That’s why even the most careful strictures on death penalty cases could fail to prevent the execution of innocent people — and why we would do well to be more vigilant and specific in articulating the causes for overturning an unlawful conviction. Richard Moran is a professor of sociology and criminology at Mount Holyoke College.
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Post by happyhaddock on Aug 13, 2007 13:43:16 GMT -5
US juries get verdict wrong in one of six cases: studyJun 28 09:55 AM US/EasternSo much for US justice: juries get the verdict wrong in one out of six criminal cases and judges don't do much better, a new study has found. And when they make those mistakes, both judges and juries are far more likely to send an innocent person to jail than to let a guilty person go free, according to an upcoming study out of Northwestern University. "Those are really shocking numbers," said Jack Heinz, a law professor at Northwestern who reviewed the research of his colleague Bruce Spencer, a professor in the statistics department. Recent high-profile exonerations of scores of death row inmates have undermined faith in the infallibility of the justice system, Heinz said. But these cases were considered relative rarities given how many checks and balances - like rules on the admissibility of evidence, the presumption of innocence and the appeals process - are built into the system. "We assume as lawyers that the system has been created in such a way to minimize the chance we'll convict the innocent," he said in an interview. "The standard of proof in a criminal case is beyond a reasonable doubt - it's supposed to be a high one. But judging by Bruce's data the problem is substantial." The study, which looked at 290 non-capital criminal cases in four major cities from 2000 to 2001, is the first to examine the accuracy of modern juries and judges in the United States. It found that judges were mistaken in their verdicts in 12 percent of the cases while juries were wrong 17 percent of the time. More troubling was that juries sent 25 percent of innocent people to jail while the innocent had a 37 percent chance of being wrongfully convicted by a judge. The good news was that the guilty did not have a great chance of getting off. There was only a 10 percent chance that a jury would let a guilty person free while the judge wrongfully acquitted a defendant in 13 percent of the cases. But that could have been because so many of the cases ended in a conviction: juries convicted 70 percent of the time while the judges said they would have found the defendant guilty in 82 percent of the cases. The study did not look at enough cases to prove that these numbers are true across the country, Spencer cautioned. But it has provided insight into how severe the problem could be, and has also shown that measuring the problem is possible. "People have to have some faith in the court system. We have to know how well our systems are working," Spencer said in his suburban Chicago office. "We know there are errors because someone confesses after the fact or there's DNA evidence," he said. "What's the optimal tradeoff given that juries ultimately will make mistakes? ... Are those balances something society is okay with?" Spencer's study does not examine why the mistakes were made or which cases ought to be overturned. Instead, he determined the probability that a mistake was made by looking at how often judges disagreed with the jury's verdict. "If they disagree they can't both be right," he explained. Spencer found an agreement rate of just 77 percent, which means a lot of mistakes were being made. Spencer hopes to find funding for a much larger study whose results could be representative of the overall system. Finding a solution will be much harder to do than quantifying the problem, Heinz warned. "The sources of the errors are quite resilient to correction," he said. "They have to do with all sorts of biases and the strong presumption of guilt when someone is arrested and brought to trial." The study will be published in the July edition of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.
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Post by happyhaddock on Sept 8, 2007 20:12:14 GMT -5
Dan Rather asks: Did Texas execute innocent men? << LINKNo kidding. Tonight, a relatively new TV network, HDNet, which only goes into 400,000 households across the country, airs a special, commercial-free, 40-minute report entitled, “Dan Rather Reports: Did Texas Execute Innocent Men?” The report, partly reported and entirely anchored anchored by Dan Rather, looks at the cases of Ruben Cantu and Carlos De Luna, who were two of the four people included in NCADP’s 2006 report, “Innocent and Executed: Four Chapters in the Life of America’s Death Penalty.” The program will air at 8 p.m. East Coast time and again at 11 p.m. East Coast time so that people on the West Coast can see it during prime time. The new cable network carrying the report is called HDNet, and is unavailable to most American viewers (it only goes into 400,000 households.) If you visit HDNets web site, you can see that a lot of restaurants and, strangely, sports bars do carry the network as part of their satellite programming (go here to see what cable systems carry HDNet: www.hd.net/watch_at_home.html And go here to see whether restaurants or bars in your town carry it: www.hd.net/sportsbars.htmlFor those of you who can't get to a place that has HDNet, you can see a clip from tonight's program by going here. posted by David Elliot
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Post by happyhaddock on Sept 4, 2007 18:17:48 GMT -5
Happily surprised to see that Perry actually took the recommendation and spared him! Life in prison is still pretty harsh for his case, but at least he will have his life, and you never know what could happen in the future. BTW, will be a report by Dan Rather on HDNet tonight on a couple cases where Texas may have executed innocent men- www.hd.net/drr229I'm convinced that, based on statistics, G W Bush alone may have signed death warrants for more than one innocent.
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Post by happyhaddock on Aug 4, 2007 12:34:52 GMT -5
Compensating the Wrongly Convicted <<< LINKVincent Moto was walking on a Philadelphia sidewalk with his girlfriend and baby son one day in May 1985. He was 22, working as a sales representative for a company selling granola bars, taking a business course, and playing drums in a rock and roll band. The idea that he'd be going to jail was about as likely as a plane falling from the sky, he said. But that was the day a passing woman identified him as the man who had raped her five months earlier. . . . Moto had requested DNA testing as early as 1987, after his mother sent him a newspaper article she had clipped. It was not until 1995 that a test was carried out on the victim's underwear. It showed that he was not her attacker. But Moto is not eligible for any reparation for his years in prison. He was wrongfully convicted in Pennsylvania, one of 28 American states without a law entitling the exonerated to claim compensation. Two bills that would create a right to compensation have died in committee at the state legislature; a third is stalled there now. Another bill that would expunge wrongful convictions has had as little success. In the states that do make reparations to the wrongly imprisoned, compensation varies wildly. In some, exonerated prisoners receive a fixed award for each year spent inside: $36,500 in California, $5,000 in Wisconsin, $50,000 in Alabama, $15,000 in Louisiana. A former prisoner in Tennessee can claim up to $1 million; in New Hampshire claims are capped at $20,000. Some states, such as New Jersey, fix the amount according to lost income, others include this money as an additional payment to compensation already given. Several states offer other benefits, such as free health care, counseling, and tuition -- though in Montana, that is all the wrongfully convicted can expect to receive. Moto and his family could use the benefits. Despite the associate's degree he earned in prison, he has only worked casually since he got out. Employers recoil when he tries to explain his conviction, he said. He has been diagnosed with acute depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and receives a disability payment. His parents spent their retirement fund on lawyers to fight for his release. Now in their 70s, both are still working. He's managed to build a "pretty good" relationship with his son, but it's been hard to bond with an older daughter. "I can't go back in time and be there for her," he said. James Tillman, who spent 18 years in prison for a rape he did not commit, made headlines earlier this year when the Connecticut state legislature agreed to award him $5 million. Lawmakers, who have not passed a general compensation law, said they were especially moved by his lack of bitterness. But just a few weeks earlier, legislators in Florida rejected a $1.25 million award to Alan Crotzer, who had been exonerated after serving 24 years for rape, kidnapping and robbery. "It's a crazy patchwork quilt," said Heather Weigand, director of new programs and services for the Life After Exoneration Program, a California-based non-profit which gave some support services to Moto before a lack of funds forced it to cut its eastern programs. Two years after his 2002 pardon, Gary Gauger received $61,000 for the three years he spent in an Illinois jail after being wrongfully convicted of his parents' murder. A large portion of the money went towards legal bills from his first trial, but he was able to invest a small amount in an organic vegetables business he set up on his family's farm. "It was nice because when I got out of prison I had no money, no work," he said. Gauger said that among the exonerated, he has been fortunate. "I've been lucky because [when I left prison] I had a support group, and I was able to move back into my parents' house with my sister and her husband. At least I had a place to live and somewhere to go." Unlike their guilty fellow inmates who enter the parole system upon completion of their sentences, the exonerated are simply released back in to the world they left years before, without any support. . . .
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