Legislation | Innocence Project of Florida

Archive for the ‘legislation’ Category

Compensation Statutes Discussed in Colorado

Jordan —

August 20, 2012 @ 9:45 AM —

Comments (0)

Colorado does not have statutes that command or set rules for the financial compensation of people who have been exonerated after being convicted of crimes they did not commit.

Colorado is considering the need for creating such a compensation statute. The Colorado District Attorneys Council discussed the issue a few weeks ago. Senator Pat Steadman has been looking into the compensation statutes of the District of Columbia and 26 states that have them.

Without compensation statutes, Robert Dewey and so many others who have been proven innocent after decades of wrongful imprisonment have to scrape by in poverty. Dewey, who spent 18 years in prison for a rape and murder he did not commit, currently suffers from more than his loss of time.

He receives food stamps, because he cannot work.

He cannot work, because of a back injury he received while in prison.

He cannot pay the medical bills to remove the metal rods and plates that a prison doctor placed in his spine to fix this injury.

And he cannot get employment, because he has not worked in more than 18 years and lacks familiarity and skills with the advances of the last 18 years.

Had he not gone to prison, these problems would probably not exist.

Colorado must consider not only which state has the statute most suitable for it, but also what the other 27 are leaving out.

Dewey has all the adversities, caused by his time in prison, that would easily grant him $50,000 for every year he was wrongfully incarcerated if he had been in Florida or another state with a similar statute.

Under paragraph (e) of Chapter 961.06 Florida Statutes (2012), “the total compensation awarded under paragraphs (a), (c), and (d) may not exceed $2 million.” Florida’s statutes do offer the opportunity for exonerees to be provided with “the amount of any reasonable attorney’s fees and expenses incurred and paid by the wrongfully incarcerated person in connection with all criminal proceedings and appeals regarding the wrongful conviction.” Florida, however, does not allow for the costs associated with seeking compensation for the wrongful conviction.

These incurred expenses are exactly what exoneree Jeffrey Deskovic asks the Innocence Project’s (New York) Exoneration Compensation Report to address to the State of New York, which has a statute requiring the exonerated person to file suit against the State and prove damages. Deskovic says the State, upon losing the compensation lawsuit, should take care of the litigation costs and the fees paid to the exonerated person’s attorney to pursue the lawsuit.

His article for Examiner.com applauds and appreciates the Innocence Project’s work in exonerating him, but adds that its report needs to ask a little more of the State.

He mentions that, of course, no amount of money can replace the pain caused by their time in prison that will affect them for the rest of their life, but that “it is adding insult after injury for a state to tell an exoneree that the pain and suffering of wrongful imprisonment that they endured was only worth $50,000,” and then lessen the amount by making them cover their own attorneys fees.

We do not want to demonize the existence of these costs. Lawyers must get paid for their work. However, the State made the mistake in convicting an innocent person. The least it can do is try to make up for that mistake without further penalizing the exoneree. In New York, the court determines the money paid per year of wrongful incarceration with a damage assessment in mind. In Florida, the award is a set amount. Pilfering from that amount only lessens the amount of compensation that can never make up for the time lost to the criminal system. Indeed, it only serves to make the exoneree less able to be self sufficient in a world that is vastly different than the one he or she left at the time of the wrongful conviction.

Deskovic does think that the money paid to exonerees should depend on how their career or earning potential was diminished by their time in prison. He writes: “certainly the lost wages of a middle-aged adult who had dropped out of high school could not be equal to a college educated exoneree.”

Dewey is poor because of his time in prison. His health gives him more to worry about financially than attorney’s fees. He is plagued by the cycle of not being able to get money because of his health and not being able to fix his health because of not having money. In Florida, Dewey would receive a $900,000 annuity, which could be paid out in as little as 10 years or over remainder of his life and would earn interest. All things considered, the amount received annually is hardly enough to cover his basic living needs and medical expenses.

If any person is in need of more than the $50,000 standard in states like New York and Florida, it is Robert Dewey and exonerees like him. Colorado can place a minimum and maximum on total compensation awarded, as Florida and others do, but it must remember to assess each exoneree’s situation to determine the appropriate amount of money that they need to pay for the actual damage the wrongful imprisonment caused them, and then some.

justice,legislation,litigation,Uncategorized, colorado district attorneys council, Colorado exonerations, exoneree compensation, justice for the innocent, Robert Dewey, statutes of wrongful incarceration

Solitary Confinement: Re-assessing, Re-evaluating, Re-thinking

Anne —

July 27, 2012 @ 4:27 PM —

Comments (1)

Note: This is the first of a three-part series on solitary confinement.

Dr. Craig Haney, the nation’s leading expert on inmate mental health, and a professor of psychology at the University of California at Santa Cruz, recently testified before a U. S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights on the effects of solitary confinement upon prisoners. Inmates in long-term confinement, according to Haney, suffer mental breakdowns from the lack of human contact that can lead to a multitude of mental, physical and emotional conditions, including psychosis, mutilations and suicide. Solitary confinement for most inmates, Haney testified, “precipitates a descent into madness” and can cause “profound, psychological damage.”

The increase in solitary confinement in the United States (since the late 1970s), according to statistics provided by Haney, is the result of the “confluence of three unfortunate trends”: mass imprisonment, the shift in responsibility for housing the mentally ill to the nation’s prison systems, and the abandonment of the notion of rehabilitation. Haney, who is also chair of UCSC’s Legal Studies program, estimated that 80,000 of the nation’s 2.3 million inmates in prisons and jails are in long-term solitary confinement. A great number of inmates have spent the majority of their prison sentences in solitary confinement, a legal and administrative practice that separates designated inmates from the prison’s general population.

Professor Haney was invited to testify by Subcommittee chairman Senator Richard “Dick” Durbin, D-Ill, at the first-ever hearing on the constitutional, fiscal, and public safety consequences of solitary confinement. Since 1971, Haney has conducted groundbreaking research into the effects of solitary confinement upon prisoners. His work has been cited in numerous scholarly journals and publications. Since 1971, he has been a leading proponent of mental health issues affecting prison inmates. As a graduate student, he was one of the principal investigators in an academic undertaking that became known as the “Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE).” He and fellow researchers placed a group of psychologically healthy college students in a prison-like environment, randomly assigning half to the position of prison guards; the other participants were designated as prisoners.

The researchers in the SPE carefully monitored participants’ behavior during the designated period, eventually ending the experiment, however, upon their observation that the otherwise “psychologically healthy volunteers in the simulated prison [setting] rapidly deteriorated into mistreatment and emotional breakdowns.” Thus began Haney’s prolific research into the effects of solitary confinement upon prisoners who have been incarcerated for extended periods of time. Since the SPE, Haney’s work has extended into the effects of capital punishment as well. In 2011, his research was cited numerous times in the majority opinion when the United States Supreme Court upheld a ruling ordering California to release 46,000 prisoners in an effort to relieve the state’s overcrowded prisons.

While a great portion of Haney’s testimony before the Subcommittee centered upon the effects of solitary confinement, he also addressed the state of prisons’ mental health workers, individuals who are assigned the task of treating inmates who have mental health issues. Oftentimes the workers are (themselves) stressed and too overburdened to render effective care with respect to noticeable improvements in inmates’ mental health issues. Such inadequate healthcare not only harms prisoners, Haney testified, it also “endangers the public once those prisoners are released” from prison. Without adequate mental healthcare as well as available, external counseling, prisoners, once released from the confines of a structured environment, are oftentimes present and “untreated” in the public domain.

Many times, according to statistics provided during the hearing, non-treated inmates (or inadequately treated inmates) commit crimes which cause their return to the familiar, institutional environment of incarceration. A vicious cycle of re-institutionalization becomes, in many cases, the norm. An overburdened healthcare system speaks not only to an inadequate system of governance–as it relates to prison reformation–it also articulates a much broader statement in terms of the responsibilities of government in being fiscally accountable to those who work in conditions as presented in California’s (and other states’) prison facilities.

Haney’s testimony before the Subcommittee concluded on multiple points of note. According to Haney, we put “far too many people in prison, we pay far too little attention to what happens to them while they’re there, we keep them there for far too long, then we disregard what happens to them when they try to make the difficult transition to come out into the free world.” In April 2012,the National Academy of Sciences appointed Haney to a panel to study the causes and consequences of high rates of incarceration in the United States.

Others testifying on issues related to solitary confinement included the Honorable Charles Samuels, Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons; Christopher Epps, Commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections; and former inmate Anthony Graves, who was released from Texas death row in 2010, after spending 18 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Ten of the 18 years Graves spent on death row were in solitary confinement. He is the founder of “Anthony Believes,” an organization dedicated to the health and well-being of individuals consigned to death row and solitary confinement. His front-line advocacy has garnered national attention on issues related to solitary confinement and prison reformation.

exoneration,justice,legislation,prison,Science, death penalty, Dr. Craig Haney, exoneration, National Academy of Sciences, solitary confinement and mental health effects, Stanford Prison Experiment, Texas, wrongful incarceration

U.S. last country to allow parole for juvenile murder-convicts

Jordan —

July 05, 2012 @ 8:48 PM —

Comments (0)

The potential for life beyond bars should consider the negative socioeconomic and environmental circumstances and the impacts on the childhood of the 2,496 juveniles serving life-without-parole sentences.

Last month the U.S. Supreme Court ruled by the narrowest margin, 5-4, that juveniles convicted of homicide and given life sentences must be allowed the opportunity for parole. In 2010, the Court ruled that life without parole sentences for juveniles convicted of non-homicide offenses was cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore a violation of the 8th amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Prior to this change, the U.S. was the only country in the world to banish their youth to prison with no chance of release except death.

The American Civil Liberties Union says 2,496 people across the country are serving life without parole for juvenile crimes, 1,727 of them in five states:

Pennsylvania 475,
Michigan 358,
Florida 355,
California 301 and
Louisiana 238.

In Michigan, about two-thirds are African-American and 45 percent were 16 or younger. 41 percent are from the Detroit area. Read more here.

In Pennsylvania in the 1990s and before, judges could only treat juveniles guilty of murder in two ways: juvenile detention until the age of 21 and then released into the public or go into prison for life without parole. As a judge during a time of high racial tension, would he think it socially acceptable to allow a murderer, juvenile or not, back into the public after a few years in a detention facility? With such a minor discipline for murder, the extreme may have seemed like the safer and surer option.

The Sentencing Project has a report on some additional statistics about the lives of juvenile lifers without parole before they committed their crimes. A third of the 1,000 surveyed lived in public housing; many others reported being homeless. Black juvenile defendants in for killing a white person were twice as likely to be sentenced to life without parole, while white defendants convicted of killing a black person were half as likely to receive the same sentence. Pennsylvania is the worst for its 315/450, African-American to total juvenile lifer ratio.

Even more stats show how life presented itself to them. 79 percent of the lifers were exposed to reoccurring domestic violence and 54 percent to weekly neighborhood violence. Such violence entails plenty of physical abuse, possibly killing, and significant social and economic deprivations. Nearly half of all, and almost 80 percent of females, experienced physical abuse.

Female juvenile lifers especially revealed that 77.3 percent had histories of sexual abuse, and 20 percent were victims of sexual abuse.

But these are children. Bryan Stevenson, executive director for the Equal Justice Initiative, suggests that the extreme potential for change from teenage years to adulthood should be considered to give judges more leeway in determining their sentences.

Academic challenges that went unaddressed also seemed common amongst these lifers. The largest figure in the study: 84.4 percent were at one time suspended or expelled from school. During the time of their offenses, just under half were even attending school.

Tyrone Jones is just one of these lifers rightfully petitioning court not for a second chance at life but a chance at life. Although his situation is different in that he has a claim of innocence, thousands will likely soon follow his footsteps.

Jones has served almost 40 years for a first-degree murder that occurred when he was 16. Aside from his application for release, he has Pennsylvania Innocence Project Legal Director Marissa Bluestine on his side. Bluestine contends that Jones should not have been in prison in the first place. First, the gun he was in possession of did not match the bullet that killed the man he was convicted for killing.

Since the law has changed, it is only obligatory for these convicts to apply for parole and be released. Jones is likely the first of this group to apply for release. Bluestine is filing the petition on his behalf.

exoneration,legislation,policy, black discrimination parole, conviction by racism, juvenile convict, juvenile parole, murder parole, supreme court juvenile parole, Tyrone Jones parole

Florida Innocence Commission final report implores reforms

Jordan —

July 02, 2012 @ 11:11 PM —

Comments (2)

The Florida Innocence Commission issued its final report, thoroughly detailing the findings of its 25-member panel over the course of its two years in existence. We hope that the thorough research done by these respected professionals will be taken seriously by policymakers. To quote from the chairman’s remarks:

“If these recommendations are not given serious consideration, thoroughly vetted and implemented in some form, then the problems suffered in the past of wrongful convictions…will continue to occur..some may even argue the price of justice is too high…There can never be an unreasonable price attached to a founding principle of this Country (Rule of Law).”

The study determined where, in the process of determining the guilt of a suspect, poor procedure has often led to false conviction of an innocent person. Such procedures that need serious reform are in the processes of culling of eye-witness reports, assessing the reliability of interviews with jailhouse snitches (jail-mates of the convicted), and preparing ill-equipped defense lawyers.

We hope that Florida prosecutors, police chiefs and sheriffs will understand the need for consistency amongst separate agencies. As it stands, they resolved to implement a plan to merely recommend that agencies develop their own standards for how to conduct a photo lineup. Within this plan, they merely suggest that the photo administrator should not know who the suspect is. Should separate police departments within the same jurisdiction (Tallahassee Police Department and FSUPD) use different processes, then the same lineup of suspects may leave different impressions on the eyewitness choosing from the two different lineups.

The measure of making sure the administrator does not know who the suspect is is called a double-blind, because then neither party knows who the suspect is. This is a most obligatory measure of any scientific process, something that should be left up to more than a suggestion.

The Florida Supreme Court created the Commission two years ago in response to the increasing number of exonerations of wrongfully convicted people.

Numerous articles erroneously reported that Governor Rick Scott ended funding for the Commission. This is not true. The funding for the Commission ended because it was only slated for two years. Now that it has completed its work, it has died a natural death.

Although we have supported the formation and the work of the Innocence Commission, we are two separate organizations. Some of have confused IPF with the Innocence Commission, as the Commission stated in their official report that they have been contacted by inmates and their related parties “requesting that the Commission investigate their claims of actual innocence.” We are here for that purpose. They served their researched-based purpose and have left their findings for policymakers to learn from.

Read the final report here by click the link that says Florida Innocence Commission Final Report to the Supreme Court of Florida.

justice,legislation,policy, exoneration reform, eyewitness identification, florida innocence commission report, Sequential Double-Blind Administration

Texas Victim Adds to Rape Kit Registry Need

Jordan —

May 25, 2012 @ 11:45 AM —

Comments (0)

News reports out of New Orleans show that already tested evidence, in the form of a rape kit, was found in the attic of a criminal courthouse. The evidence was thought to have been destroyed during Hurricane Katrina. Should its existing DNA content not match currently convicted Brooker Diggins, he is not exactly off the hook. It may match the victim’s boyfriend of the time, with whom she had sex 62 hours before the documented time of the rape.

While the test may be inconclusive, this story more largely addresses the state of rape kits nationwide. Old evidence, especially that from before DNA testing existed, may have been disregarded in the time of its founding. DNA samples had been collected for the right reasons but not utilized for their full evidential ability.

No one thought to test the rape kit of a Dallas woman, from her incident in 1984, until her husband called the police department about it in 2008, and investigators responded and found it. According to the article from NBCDFW.com, more than 400,000 kits, or existing DNA sets from assault crimes, are in existence and have not been tested. The fact that this woman actively searched for the truth in the evidence reminds us that truth in justice is equally important to victims and inmates.

The timeliness in finding such evidence is possibly the most important aspect. While her kit matched the DNA of a known rapist, he could not be prosecuted because of the statutory limitation. To make progress on avoiding such a situation in other cases, she is working with Sen. John Cornyn on the Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence Registry (SAFER) Act of 2012.

In spirit of The National Registry of Exonerations mentioned in Tuesday’s post, SAFER will also be establishing an online database of forensic evidence, to assure no kits go untested. Their quantities being even larger than the amount of known exonerations, having them organized is only mandatory to avoid wrongful conviction due to poor bookkeeping. This evidence is crucial to saving lives.

Click here to support SAFER.

justice,legislation,policy,post-conviction,Uncategorized, Brooker Diggins, investigating a rape, John Cornyn, laws on forensics, rape kit, SAFER act, sexual assault evidence, true justice

Weekly Roundup: Conviction Authorities Make Changes

Jordan —

May 15, 2012 @ 2:34 PM —

Comments (0)

Virginia DFS to release post-conviction reports

Reports on 78 convicted people whose DNA was excluded in Virginia’s post-conviction testing project — and whose identities have largely been kept secret by the state — will be released under the Freedom of Information Act after July 1, according to the Richmond-Times Dispatch and the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project.

For unknown reasons, DFS has been resisting these documents’ release. However, the state budget now features an amendment that orders it.

The fact that such measures were required to release the documents implies that they will come out smelling like fish, not to mention that the department that exists to ensure the truest justice was doing the resisting. While DNA testing has mostly been reversing misidentification cases, it is also proving errors in some past and current forensic processes.

The fear of being discredited continues to stifle the truth in this and other cases. An understanding about forensics scientists needs to exist: they can make mistakes, but even more so that older determinants that they were taught were legitimate, are not necessarily.

More on the dependability of forensics here

MSNBC’s “Rock Center” reports on misidentification issues

In a mock identification test conducted on the web page of the MSNBC show “Rock Center,” 46 percent of the test takers identified the wrong suspect. These are people choosing a face out of six total suspects after seeing a very brief surveillance video, in the comfort of their homes, stress free. Even without outside factors, almost half would have sent the wrong person to trial.

The report also shows how Dallas, Texas has formed a model which they hope to be much more effective. When someone looks at a page of multiple faces they compare the faces to each other, not to the one they have in their memory. So, Dallas utilizes a photo administer, to avoid bias, who shows the photos to the victim or witness one by one. The report shows actual footage of this process, during which a woman thoroughly observes a few pictures then, when it appears, immediately slams on the photo of what seems to be the perpetrator and breaks down crying.

While it certainly proves a better effort than the truly faulty one-page photo lineup, the identification test that 46 percent of home viewers failed was administered in the same way. Photos were shown one by one, with the ability to toggle back and forth between each. Although this was unscientifically monitored test, its results should still offer fair warning to the trustworthiness of Dallas’ model.

See the video, article, and take the test here.

Innocence Project of Florida,justice,legislation,post-conviction, dallas identification, dallas model, department of forensic sciences, photo identification, rock center misidentification

Weekly Update: Exonerees Speak Up for Justice and the Northeast Steps Forward with Reforms

Chelsea —

April 13, 2012 @ 11:13 AM —

Comments (0)

Exoneree Juan Rivera Steps Out to Speak Against Wrongful Convictions

Juan Rivera has remained fairly quiet since he was exonerated earlier this year in a 1992 Illinois murder, but now he will be speaking at an upcoming panel discussion on wrongful convictions. Rivera will appear at Northern Illinois University’s College of Law in DeKalb Tuesday on a so-called Innocence Panel that also includes Justice Susan Hutchinson of the Illinois Appellate Court’s 2nd District, which authored the ruling that led to Rivera’s release, according to the Lake Forest TribLocal.

The panel is scheduled with the intent of bringing awareness to the critical importance of justice reform in preventing wrongful convictions, especially considering an upcoming general election when Lake County will be electing a new state’s attorney.

Read more about Rivera’s case and the upcoming NIU Innocence Panel here.

Connecticut Senate Moves to Repeal Death Penalty

Last Thursday the Connecticut Senate debated for hours before deciding in a 20-16 vote to repeal their death penalty law. Connecticut’s largely left-wing House of Representatives is expected to return a vote in favor of repealing the law within the next several weeks, according to the Associated Press. Further, “Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, the first Democratic governor elected in two decades, has vowed to sign the same bill vetoed by his Republican predecessor.”

Connecticut is one of five states to have done away with the death penalty recently, including New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, and Illinois. However, those states are ones that have hardly used the death penalty within the past fifty years.

Several other states, such as Kentucky and California, have proposals to repeal capitol punishment pending. Increased awareness of how often our system gets it wrong is a big part of why these precautions and considerations are being made.

Weekly Update: While Some States Move Forward, Others Seem to Be Holding Back on Justice Reform

Chelsea —

April 02, 2012 @ 2:46 PM —

Comments (1)

Virginia Seems Disinclined to Free the Wrongfully Convicted

A surface level examination of Virginia’s massive DNA evidence evaluation seems to indicate that the State is taking wrongful convictions seriously and is attempting to uncover and exonerate those who were convicted of crimes they did not commit. Seven years and $5 million ago, then-governor Mark Warner ordered a random examination of 31 old cases containing biological evidence that hadn’t been tested for DNA. The audit revealed two wrongful convictions which, in turn, prompted the governor to call for an audit of all cases from 1973-1988 that contained biological evidence.

The problem surrounding this project, however, is that there appears to be an inclination to keep the project hidden, to keep information away from the public eye. No one really knows how this testing is being conducted, and oftentimes innocent people aren’t informed of their proven innocence until months or even years later (as in the case of Bennett Barbour). Conducting wide-scale DNA testing on cases closed before the testing was available is an excellent and necessary step towards freeing the innocent, but it means nothing if there is inclination to keep the information hidden. Pride and ego have no place in the justice system, especially not when the freedom of innocent people is on the line.

Dillon Got What He Needed & Deserved: An Apology and Compensation

Chelsea —

March 15, 2012 @ 10:10 AM —

Comments (1)

March 1, 2012 will be a day William Dillon will always remember. William served 27.5 years for a murder he did not commit. He was proven innocent using DNA testing in 2008. He waited 3.5 years for the State to do the right thing and they have.

Gov. Rick Scott apologized multiple times to William during the signing of the bill that will compensate William for his wrongful conviction and wrongful incarceration.

Read more coverage of the day: here, here, here, and here.

Innocence Project of Florida,legislation, DNA testing, Gov. Rick Scott, Innocence Project of Florida, legislation, Sen. Mike Haridopolos, William Dillon

Dillon Got What He Needed & Deserved: An Apology And Compensation

Jackie —

March 05, 2012 @ 11:22 AM —

Comments (1)

Gov. Rick Scott apologized multiple times to William during the signing of the bill that will compensate William for his wrongful conviction and wrongful incarceration.

Read more coverage of the day: here, here, here, and here.

Innocence Project of Florida,legislation, DNA testing, Gov. Rick Scott, Sen. Mike Haridopolos, William Dillon