Wilton Dedge spent 22 years, or 8,000 days in prison in Florida for a rape he didn't commit. The state legislature now wants him and others in his position to accept $200,000 for the lost years of his life.

Dedge wants lawmakers to give him $5 million for the nearly 8,000 days he spent in prison, for his lost wages, the money his family spent to defend and visit him and the work done by the lawyers who fought for his exoneration.

The House proposal would simply allow Dedge and others like him to ask the Legislature for the $200,000 or benefits package. It would not prohibit people from seeking a larger amount from the Legislature if they have won a lawsuit. Dedge hasn't filed a lawsuit.

This bill is an insult. The wrongfully convicted should not be forced to parry between the courts and legislature for redress. As the Lakeland Ledger says, "It's time to right the wrong."

What an outrage! Wilbert Rideau was freed from jail in January after serving 44 years. During that time he became a critically acclaimed journalist. At his last re-trial, he was convicted of manslaughter, for which the maximum sentence is 21 years. Having served more than that, he was freed.

Judge David Ritchie issued the order for Rideau to pay up and said he based it on an anticipated windfall of money he expects Rideau to make from a writing career. Ritchie, who presided over Rideau's fourth trial, said it's not unlike assessing costs to a person who expects a settlement in the near future from a pending civil suit.

His lawyers have until April 15 to appeal, and they will.

Lead defense attorney and public defender Ron Ware said Tuesday he and the other members of Rideau's defense team plan to do just that. "It is totally inappropriate," Ware said. "It is unprecedented for an indigent (defendant) who has served that much time to be ordered to pay court costs. The trial is over, the verdict is in, and it is time to let it go and move on."

You can read about Mr. Rideau's long fight for justice here.

Michael Anthony Williams left prison in Louisiana yesterday after serving 24 years for a rape that DNA tests show he didn't commit. He has been in jail since the age of 16. Now 40, where does he go? There was no tearful and joyful family waiting at the jail for him to come out. He left with Vanessa Plotkin, his Innocence Project attorney. [TChris provided excellent analysis of the case here.]

His first act beyond the electronic gates and razor wire Friday morning wasn't a lavish meal or a tearful reunion with family and friends. Instead, it was a drive to a white stucco building -- blue paint peeling from the trim -- at Laurel and North 18th streets near downtown Baton Rouge, where the 40-year-old quietly got his first apartment.

"It needs a little cleaning," he said of his new home. "It's definitely better than a prison cell."

Williams had been sentenced to life without parole. There had been no physicial evidence linking him to the crime. He wrote to Barry Scheck and Cardozo's Innocence Project, and they accepted the case.

by TChris

John Grisham, famed for novels about lawyers, may prove that truth can be more compelling than fiction when he tackles his first work of nonfiction: the account of an innocent man sent to death row.

Ron Williamson, who died of liver disease in December at age 51, at one point came within five days of being executed for the 1982 murder of a 21-year-old woman. He was freed in April 1999.

Grisham bought the rights to the story from Williamson's sisters.

If the story has a hero, says Grisham, it will probably be the lawyers who saved Williamson from imminent death. Grisham hopes to finish the book in about ten months.

by TChris

With the exception of executing the innocent, it doesn't get any worse than this.

Arrested, tried and convicted in just three months, [Michael] Williams was sentenced to hard labor for life with no possibility for parole and dispatched to the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, one of the nation's most notorious and deadly prisons. At times the institution lived up to its reputation. In one incident, Williams said, he was stabbed 16 times.

It took Williams' jury only an hour to decide that he beat and sexually assaulted his math tutor. That was in 1981, and Williams was just 16. Williams was the victim of his tutor's mistaken identification.

Now, nearly 24 years after his arrest, independent DNA tests by three laboratories, including the Louisiana state crime lab, show what Williams has long contended: He is not the man who committed the crime.

Williams becomes the 159th convicted defendant whose innocence has been established by DNA. Williams' lawyers and the district attorney in Jonesboro are (in the DA's words) "in the process of reaching a mutually agreeable method for securing his release from incarceration . . . on March 11."

by TChris

James Driskell was convicted of murdering a Winnipeg man, Perry Harder, after prosecutors convinced a jury that the victim's hair was found in Driskell's van. Hair analysis before DNA was about as sophisticated as "Shucks, sure looks to me like it's the same hair."

But DNA tests in 2002 showed the hair did not belong to Harder, and key witnesses at Driskell's trial, who were paid for their testimony, have since recanted or threatened to recant their statements, the federal government said.

The prosecution and police also withheld evidence from Driskell's lawyers.

Justice Minister Irwin Cotler overturned Driskell's conviction. Cotler ordered a new trial, but Manitoba's Justice Department won't pursue one. Driskell, who has been free since 2003 while his conviction was under review, spent about 12 years in prison before his release.

by TChris

TalkLeft wrote about Darnell Williams here, here and here.

Williams was facing execution for his role in the murders of a Gary couple when former Gov. Joseph Kernan commuted his sentence to life without parole five days before he was to be put to death this past summer.

Williams' near-execution is the subject of a documentary premiering on A&E's "American Justice" March 16.

"Countdown to an Execution" chronicles the frantic attempts by Juliet Yackel, Williams' chief attorney, to save his life before the scheduled July 9, 2004, execution.

by TChris

Some defendants who were falsely accused have benefitted from advances in DNA testing in their efforts to overturn their convictions. Wilton Dedge is one of them. (TalkLeft background is collected here.)

But what of those who are falsely accused of crimes that leave no DNA evidence? St. Petersburg columnist Martin Dyckman laments the Florida legislature's indifference to the wrongly convicted.

Florida politicians are fooling only themselves if they think that the current post-conviction DNA testing law does away with wrongful imprisonment in the Sunshine State. The only circumstance more outrageous than the resistance to compensating Dedge is the Legislature's pervasive indifference to the moral certainty that there are hundreds of equally innocent people still rotting behind Florida bars.

Dyckman points to the inherent uncertainty of eyewitness identification as a primary cause of wrongful convictions, using Dedge's case as an example. Among Dyckman's proposed fixes:

by TChris

Last month, as celebrated in this post, Theodore White was released from prison, having served five years for a crime he didn't commit. He returned to a home in disrepair and a mountain of debt, but that hasn't stopped him from appreciating what he has: freedom.

"They took every right I had," he said. "I couldn't fish. I couldn't hunt. I couldn't hold a firearm. I couldn't drive. What is freedom? Driving down that road with the radio on with the wind coming through the window. That is the greatest. That is freedom."

For White, as for many others, freedom came at great cost.

White's family raised every dime it could and more for his initial defense, the appeal and the subsequent trials. After paying 25 years of a 30-year mortgage, his parents had to refinance their home again for 30 years. Everything of value that the family owned was sold or mortgaged.

White's father said: "We don't have any retirement. Everything is mortgaged. But you know, the way I look at it, I don't give a crap. I know we will make it. We will recover."

Wrongfully imprisoned inmates shouldn't have to beg the legislature or wait 20 years for compensation. Florida is making moves to correct the problem, and the Daytona Beach News Journal endorses it.

Wilton Dedge, released last year after spending 22 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit, will not have to wait as long. The horror over the waste of Dedge's youth, and the incontrovertible evidence of injustice, struck a chord with the state's most powerful politicians. Acknowledging that money will never replace the lost years, they've vowed to give Dedge the means to create a new life.

Better still, they're facing reality by acknowledging that more exonerations are likely to come as inmates make use of new scientific techniques to establish their innocence. Senate President Tom Lee said this week that he wants to create a uniform system for wrongfully convicted people to seek compensation -- without having to hire a lobbyist and go begging to the Legislature. Under Florida law, it would be illegal for the state to offer Dedge more than $100,000. Lee says that should be changed.

Dateline aired an excellent program a few days ago on New York's Palladium murder. It looks to be a case of faulty eyewitness evidence and prosecutorial withholding of evidence, made all the more compelling by the extraordinary dedication of a detective who wouldn't give up fighting to prove the convicted mens' innocence. The transcript from the show is here.

Three weeks after the shooting, eyewitnesses identified 22-year-old David Lemus in a photo array. At the time, he was a part-time construction worker going to night school to become a carpenter's apprentice. Five weeks later, he was picked out again in a lineup, arrested and charged with murder.

John Niland and Kathryn Kase at Texas Defender Services will be representing Max Soffar pro bono at his new trial. They are outstanding lawyers and it will be great to see some justice for Max this time around.

Background at Kinky Friedman, Max Soffar and a Jew on Death Row.