Our Opinion: Compensate exonerated inmates

Editorial, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 31, 2005

If anyone deserves a million dollars as the victim of a grave injustice, it's probably Clarence Harrison. The Georgia General Assembly has decided the state owes him that amount for the 17 years he spent behind bars for a crime he didn't commit.

Harrison's conviction was overturned last year when DNA testing showed he could not have been the man who raped a woman on her way to a Decatur bus stop in 1986. He is the first prisoner in Georgia cleared through the work of the Georgia Innocence Project, the state affiliate of a national group advocating the use of more DNA testing in disputed convictions from years ago. (Harrison is not the first innocent person exonerated by DNA evidence.) The group is reviewing 300 cases and is seeking DNA testing for seven more prisoners whose convictions may be in doubt.

At least two other Georgia men have been similarly exonerated by DNA evidence 15 years or more after their convictions, and both are asking for compensation for the years they spent in state prisons. If they accept any state funds, they, like Harrison, would be prohibited from making any further claims against the state.

Because Harrison's case is not likely to be the last, now is a good time for the state to create a more systematic way of reviewing how best to compensate those who have been wrongly convicted and served time. The current system relies on the state's Claims Advisory Board to make recommendations on whether any compensation should be offered, but it leaves the amount up to the General Assembly.

State Rep. Stephanie Stuckey Benfield (D-Atlanta) has proposed a compensation package scaled on the amount of time spent in prison and the mental health and job counseling needs of the freed prisoner. Others have proposed similar guidelines that would also take into account whether the prisoner was convicted of other felonies that could not be cleared with new evidence.

Not all the exonerated prisoners may be as likable as Harrison clearly was to the legislators who met him. (One even offered to give him a fleet vehicle from his family's construction business.) Some ex-prisoners may be rather hardened characters who don't stir as much sympathy even if they were never guilty. They will still deserve a fair and equitable financial accounting for the time the state unfairly took their freedom.