Search Term(s):
Blog Tags:
Order by: Date Relevancy
Your search returned 3 entries.
Released without an apology
Posted: August 6, 2007 11:08 am
"It’s like a bad story on the twilight zone," David Pope tells a PBS reporter about his wrongful conviction. "The man wakes up in jail and he keeps waking up there and he can’t believe it’s really happening."
A recent episode of Life & Times, on Los Angeles PBS affiliate KCET, covered wrongful convictions and the lack of compensation for many exonerees nationwide.
In a guest blog on the show’s website, Innocence Project Co-Directors Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld write that compensation should come packaged with reforms:
Even in their first days of freedom, the euphoria that many exonerated people feel is tempered by a personal understanding of the larger problem and an unwavering resolve to help fix a broken system. They don’t want anyone else to be robbed of life and liberty as they were.
Watch the episode and read the full blog post here. (KCET)Read more about David Pope’s case and the case of Herman Atkins, who was also featured on the episode.
Read more about proposed exoneree compensation reforms.
Tags: Herman Atkins, David Shawn Pope, Exoneree Compensation
Bipartisan federal bill would exempt exoneree compensation from taxes
Posted: December 7, 2007 12:01 pm
Laws in 22 states provide compensation for people proven innocent after serving time in prison for crimes they didn’t commit, but federal tax is unclear on whether the federal government can take some of that money back. A bill introduced yesterday by New York Senator Chuck Schumer (and co-sponsored by Kansas Senator Sam Brownback) would clarify the law to exempt exonerees from paying federal income tax on compensation for a wrongful conviction. The public owes a debt to these people wronged by the justice system, Schumer said, and this bill can help make amends after the criminal justice system makes a major error.
Seven months after his release from prison in 2001, after serving 15 years for a rape he did not commit, David Pope received $385,000 in compensation from the State of Texas and set out to rebuild his life: He rented an apartment, bought a car, helped his mother pay bills and traveled overseas for the first time.In addition to supporting this bill, the Innocence Project is working to pass compensation laws in the 28 states that currently lack them. Is yours one? Check out our interactive map to find out.
The money did not last long, but being broke is not the only problem Mr. Pope, 46, has grappled with since his exoneration. He said the Internal Revenue Service has notified him that he owes $90,000 in federal taxes on the compensation he received for his wrongful conviction, but he has no idea how he is going to settle the debt.
“I didn’t know I had to pay taxes over it until the government started sending me letters,” said Mr. Pope, who has struggled to find a steady job.
Read the full story here. (New York Times, 12/07/07)
Compensation laws in California, Massachusetts and Vermont all explicity exempt exoneree compensation from state income tax.
Tags: David Shawn Pope, Exoneree Compensation
Texas prosecutors reflect on their role in wrongful convictions
Posted: June 9, 2008 12:05 pm
A groundbreaking article in this week’s issue of Texas Lawyer tells of a dozen Dallas exonerations through the eyes of the trial prosecutors. Their reflections on these cases represent a range of perspectives, but common themes emerge. There is consensus that eyewitness identification is unreliable on its own and that cases resting on a single eyewitness are a recipe for wrongful conviction. Prosecutors agree that forensic science has improved the quality of justice in American courtrooms. Many prosecutors remembered every detail of these convictions years later, and worked for the defendant’s release soon after learning of new DNA evidence proving innocence.
Prosecutors call these wrongful convictions “tragic” and one says that hindsight is 20-20.
"I don't fault anyone for doing what they're doing," Prosecutor Douglas Fletcher says. "But you can look back on any profession. Doctors can look back at doctors 30 years ago and say . . . "Why were they treating cancer that way?'"Another prosecutor, James Fry, says the unreliable nature of eyewitness identifications has been exposed by these exonerations.
… "In the criminal justice system, people are being convicted on one-witness cases. And what this says to me is we've got an inherent problem about how many of these cases we're getting wrong. And it's still going on today," says James Fry, a former Dallas prosecutor who helped send a man to prison for 27 years for a crime he didn't commit. "My question to everybody involved in this across the state and across the nation is what are we going to do about this? I don't know."Read the full story here. (Texas Lawyer, 06/06/08)
Tags: Charles Chatman, Wiley Fountain, Larry Fuller, James Giles, Donald Wayne Good, Andrew Gossett, Billy Wayne Miller, David Shawn Pope, James Waller, Gregory Wallis, Eyewitness Identification, Eyewitness Misidentification