Compensation For Time Served

[cabinetman]

Florida has a new law which compensates for being wrongfully convicted. In this particular case, no physical evidence linked this guy to the crime. According to the news reports he had a dufus for a lawyer (who eventually got disbarred).

Maybe as a result of this, more care will be taken in prosecuting those accused of a crime.
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[natausch]

Maybe, but then again it might result in a situation like we have in Illinois where the cops and legal system are still disfunctional and known criminals who were correctly incarcerated, except for the wrong crime, receive huge cash payouts.

Then again very few places on Earth are half as messed up a Illinois.

[germdoc]

When you establish an institution and it makes a mistake, that is much worse than one individual making a mistake. It has always been my belief that when the state incarcerates one person wrongly that cancels out the benefit of locking up many people correctly.

[BobSch]

Then again very few places on Earth are half as messed up a Illinois.

I lived in Aurora in '68. Nice to see some things never change.

[dbhost]

Maybe, but then again it might result in a situation like we have in Illinois where the cops and legal system are still disfunctional and known criminals who were correctly incarcerated, except for the wrong crime, receive huge cash payouts.

Then again very few places on Earth are half as messed up a Illinois.

Maybe that SHOULD act as a motivation for the public officials responsible for properly investigating and prosecuting those responsible for a crime. So for example... If Joe Blowseller is a known crack dealer, and a car stereo from a car on his block gets stolen, should Joe Blowseller get prosecuted for that car stereo theft? Not unless he did it. BUT the law enforcement agencies need to do proper police work and actually build a case strong enough to get a convicition on Joe Blowseller's illegal activity, not what he didn't do...

If I society is going to mete out punishment and call it justice, it should be done justly right? If not the entire system loses any sense of credibility.

[natausch]

I lived in Aurora in '68. Nice to see some things never change.

Well, we have a casino downtown now. That has added to and detracted from town.

We have a new school district, which my taxes feed into, that takes far west Naperville and certain parts of East Aurora and puts them together into a mostly middle and uppermiddle-class district. It leeches taxes away from the very poor East school district and is extremely unfair in my opinion.

The near East side is still the near East side, crime is high but stable, neighborhoods are hit or miss based on home ownership. Their school system is a mess though.

The West side is what it is, the "hill" mansion district has held on surprisingly well. There are many solid neighborhoods, some bad ones. The West school district has held on surprisingly well, mostly due to alumni teachers like my wife. Income and ethnic diversity is about as all over the board as anywhere. If I remember right about 40% hispanic, 20% african american and around 40% white.

Ironically Aurora gets ranked as a very livable city, mostly because the neighborhoods that have sprung up in the last twenty years and the insanity of the hills families that have stuck around. Lots of great Mexican restaurants around nowadays.

[LinuxRandal]

We all know there are issues with officers who have their minds set on a person, even to the point of ignoring evidence. BUT where I am going with this, is I expect the way the law is written, is to lessen the amount of money someone gets (huge judgments from juries) so the jurisdictions can settle for the legally required amounts, telling the person to go stick it, instead of "we screwed up".

[radhak]

Florida has a new law which compensates for being wrongfully convicted. In this particular case, no physical evidence linked this guy to the crime. According to the news reports he had a dufus for a lawyer (who eventually got disbarred)..

This is one story where all the sides are reversed : law (cops) and order (courts) got it wrong; the hurt (wrongly convicted) and lawyers (!) tried to correct it. This guy held back from signing off on this compensation just because he felt the terms in it would limit other similar victims! And his lawyer waived his fees!

And truly, the newly passed law to allow for such compensations is full of inequities :

One reason, Comras said Tuesday during the signing at the Broward Public Defender's Office, is that anyone with a felony conviction from before or during the wrongful incarceration is excluded from the program.

The law also erects multiple hurdles that, Comras said, would often require the help of a lawyer -- but the compensation doesn't cover legal fees.

``This new act has some very serious flaws that will put its use beyond the reach of most of those it is meant to serve,'' Comras said, ``those who have been wrongfully incarcerated.''

So Dave, there you go, answer to your question - if a guy is guilty of something, the cops can decide he's guilty of anything and everything else, and the law does not find it wrong !

Maybe as a result of this, more care will be taken in prosecuting those accused of a crime.
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Not sure that's gonna happen...

[Stytooner]

Not nearly enough compensation for ruining a man's life.
A couple good years would have yielded him that amount if he was allowed to work. I simply deplore the system when it fails due to incompetence.

[dbhost]

Not nearly enough compensation for ruining a man's life.
A couple good years would have yielded him that amount if he was allowed to work. I simply deplore the system when it fails due to incompetence.

It's not the incompetence so much that bothers me as it is intentional misconduct and corruption. I'd go further, but it will deteriorate quickly. I will simply say that I feel sorry for the honest, hard working men and women in law enforcement and the courts that get associated with those that misuse and abuse their authority. It makes the lives of honest folks much harder than it has to be...

Of course I would love to see a law that would make it criminal for an investigator, or prosecutor to intentionally prosecute a person for a crime that they knew that person did not commit. And I would like to see that law backed up with prison time, and ENFORCED...

[crokett]

There was a guy wrongfully imprisoned here who was released after 17 years. He was passed out drunk around where the murder was committed and had been using coke. The police found blood in his car. Not only was it not the victim's blood it wasn't even blood. That bit of evidence was not given to the defense.

[cabinetman]

Of course I would love to see a law that would make it criminal for an investigator, or prosecutor to intentionally prosecute a person for a crime that they knew that person did not commit. And I would like to see that law backed up with prison time, and ENFORCED...

I'm all for that. You would think that to charge someone with a crime, they would need more going for them than letting a jury decide guilt or innocence.
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[ironhat]

Vigorous prosecution and a high conviction rate are what district attorneys count on to keep their jobs and raises. To *ell with you, me and the truth. I would not want to have 'my day in court'. Jail time, a felony and not to mention that your family is bankrupt from attorney fees!

[Ed62]

This thread reminds me of the DA who did whatever it would take to get some college kids prosecuted for raping a girl of another race. The kids were innocent, but their lives had been turned upside down.

This was done in an effort to win the votes of a particular group of people. If I remember correctly, he lost his job. The consequences for that should have a lot more steep, regardless of which race he belonged to. A few years in jail might have been appropriate.

While it is necessary to prosecute people, they need to have the evidence to back up the charges. Innocent people who have had part of their lives taken away should be compensated appropriately. It's a good thing we have DNA now.

Ed

[LCHIEN]

there are several problems.
One, clearly no amount of money could compensate me for years spent falsely incarcerated whether by accident or on purpose.

However, I can easily see that a person convicted on clear evidence that was illegally obtained might be paid a whole lot of taxpayers money because some civil servant made a mistake. Which would be a shame. OK, yes, that should clearly be a flag to government to train employees not to make mistakes.

Here in Houston we have had a series of debacles in law enforcement in the last few years.
The forensics lab was found to have numerous problmes including lost evidence, and loss of chain of custody and physical damage to evidence that casued so many cases to be thrown out.
The DNA lab made msitakes for years and thousands and thousands of cases were thrown out. INcluding bandly handles samples/contamination, simply giving the law officers the answer they wanted (like, who's DNA do you want this to match?).
The service to which the breathalyzer machines was contracted for several years simply marked them with a calibration sticker but did not actually do any calibration on them (too much work for their multi-million dollar contract perhaps). So thousands of people are going to have their DUI convictions thrown out and pending cases dropped. Even good convictions becasue they really don't know when they stopped doing calibrations for real, they have to throw out all convictions using a machine touched by this miscreant.

So we have thousands of accused and possibly convicted criminals going free. I hope we don't have to pay them too.

How about people accused and tried but not convicted? If they are truly innocent, how about compensating them for time and money and personal anguish and loss of prestiege? Does the jury have the power to state probably guilty but not convinced vs. who brought this obviously innocent person to trial? How about paying the jury extra for those cases?

How about making civil servents accountable for wrongful convictions?
Different punishments for mistaken convictions vs. swapping lives with the victim for purposeful pursuit of prosecution (fabrication of evidence, etc) when the person is known to be innocent. Like the DA or cop goes to jail where the innocent was and the innocent gets the DA's house, wife, salary, etc. OK, so we would probably have a big drop in arrests and prosecution.

Just a few thoughts. Not a perfect society. Is there a better one?