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Jan 15, 2009 1:41 pm US/Central
DNA Exonerees Drop Lawsuits With Hopes Of New Bill
DALLAS (AP) ―
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Robert Wilson (right) and his attorney Locke Bowman discuss his federal lawsuit over his wrongful conviction in the 1997 attack of a woman at a bus stop.
CBS
A group of exonerated men freed by DNA evidence after decades in Texas prisons have dropped a series of lawsuits while they seek a new bill to increase compensation from the state that wrongly imprisoned them.
In the past week, at least six exonerated men have had their federal civil rights lawsuits dismissed or settled. West Texas attorney Kevin Glasheen, who represents 12 wrongly convicted men, said all the lawsuits are on hold.
"If the Legislature will increase state compensation, we will accept that in lieu of civil rights litigation," Glasheen said.
Advocacy groups, including the Innocence Project of Texas, are pushing the Legislature for a bill that would increase payments from the state from $50,000 for each year of imprisonment to $250,000 per year, with half paid in a lump sum and the other half paid in annuities.
The exonerated men will be able to refile their lawsuits if the Legislature does not pass a new bill, which Glasheen estimated would cost between $15 million and $20 million.
Billy James Smith, who was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 after a woman in his apartment complex was sexually assaulted at knifepoint, said current compensation laws were "inadequate," adding that "you are not going to get the justice you think you deserve." Smith was exonerated by DNA testing and released from prison in 2006 after nearly 20 years behind bars.
"If someone had told me, 'Look, I'll give you $50,000 a year if you go do 20 years in prison for something you didn't do,' nobody's going to take that," Smith said. "In 20 years, I could have been a father, a husband. I could have had my own business. I could have excelled in so many different areas. There is so much taken away from a person when they are incarcerated."
Texas leads the nation with 35 DNA exonerations. In Dallas County, judges have overturned a national high of 20 convictions based on DNA evidence, although prosecutors plan to retry one of those cases.
"The state of Texas and its criminal justice system did this to them," said Jeff Blackburn, chief counsel for the Innocence Project of Texas. "And the state of Texas ought to step up and do the right thing and take responsibility for what it did to these guys' lives."
About 25 states have some form of compensation law for the wrongly convicted, who on average spend about 12 years in prison, according to The Innocence Project, a New York-based legal center specializing in DNA exonerations. Some states have no limits on how much they will pay, while others cap it by total amount or total annual amount.
At $50,000 per year of imprisonment, the Texas package compares favorably to other states but suffers because of its lack of additional services, said Eric Ferrero, a spokesman for The Innocence Project.
"Texas' compensation law could be improved if the range of services were broader to cover, for example, tuition at state community colleges or universities," Ferrero wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
Texas has paid about $9 million in claims to 46 wrongly imprisoned people, according to the state comptroller. The largest was a $1 million claim to Larry Charles Fuller, a Dallas man wrongly convicted and sentenced to 50 years in prison for a 1981 aggravated rape he did not commit. Fuller was paroled in 1999 but returned to prison for a minor parole violation.
All other claims but one are for less than $500,000. One is a $387,000 claim paid to Wiley Fountain, a DNA exoneree sentenced to 40 years in prison for a 1986 aggravated sexual assault. He eventually served 16 years in prison and is now homeless and lives on the Dallas streets.
Glasheen said exonerated men such as Fountain often have legal expenses and other debt upon their release. Their money is subject to federal income tax, and they face a series of extraordinary challenges that current compensation laws do not address.
Paying half the amount in annuities rather than in a lump sump would help ensure a steady income for wrongly convicted men who haven't managed money for decades.
"I'm not saying the state owes these guys a living," Blackburn said. "What the state owes to them is a plan that they can build their lives around. You have to structure the payments so they can gradually learn to become financially independent."
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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