Innocent

I don't know how to give a person their life back.

Like Cheri said, it's so hard to give a person his/her life back. Germany is paying reparations to Holocaust survivors and the German Jews get a pension each month from the German government however no amount of money could ever give them back thier families, friends, or any opportunities they may have had including education. Like people Holocaust survivors, people who are wrongly convicted of a crime have no way of gaining the years they lost. They probably lost family, friends, and opportunities as well. How can they be repaid for that? I guess they could be paid, but how much would pay for the friends and family they lost along the way? What they lost is priceless.

That's a tough question as we can never give back the years that were spent behind walls, but certainly a large monetary compensation would be in order. It doesn't give back the 16 years in a case that we just had here in California, but it gives the person who was wrongly convicted a leg up on getting started on his (it happened to be a man in this case) new life.

I don't remember the state, but just recently a person was released who had served a very long time and there was no compensation at all – just a "oh well, we're sorry, we had the wrong man, here's the front door, and no, we're not paying you a thing". Now that's got to be really a crappy feeling as you walk out of the door with nothing from the state that convicted you, don't you think?

Hopefully with newer forensic techniques these types of mistakes won't happen as often, but until we have a perfect justice system, which we never will, we owe something, as citizens of this country, to wrongly convicted people.

My husband's partner is a criminal attorney and there are many times that he has felt that his client has been wrongly convicted for a crime. Believe me, their clients aren't OJ and that ilk, and the truth is that if you have money in this country, you don't go to jail, and if you can afford an attorney like Charles Mesirow, my husband's partner, you have a pretty good chance of not going to jail, or certainly of having really good representation of your rights. But if you are poor and can't afford it, then you may end up behind bars for something that you didn't do. Justice isn't blind. Justice has her hand out to the highest bidder in some cases and that is a truth that most of us don't want to hear.

We owe something to those wrongly convicted – we can't give those years back and all of us, rich or poor or whatever is in between have one thing in common – time, and a finite amount of it. Would any of us want to waste away in prison or jail for something we didn't do because we didn't get good counsel?

Money doesn't buy back time, but it something…

I watch alot of Documentaries on people who have been wrongfully convicted and later freed because of DNA tests that they have now. One of the biggest problems for them is they have trouble finding employment afterwards. One guy was told by an employer he didn't care if he was finally found innocent, that he must have done something wrong for them to find him guilty the first time. He wouldn't hire him. They do not remove the arrest or prison sentence from thier records in a lot of the cases. This needs to be changed. They need to remove all of it from thier records so they can start thier lives over. That is what they want to do most. Lets help them do that. Right now they are still be punished for a crime they didn't commit.

Lori - You are very right. The first step in getting a life back is to expunge these things from records so that the person can get employment or try to get a college education.

If a person has spent a long time in prison and then is found to have been innocent, that person should get a public apology and adequate financial compensation. The person should also get a paid college or trade school education and should be helped to find work sufficient for his support. He should also be offered paid counseling to cope with his anger and frustration and other emotions. In one case though, a man was found to have been innocent through DNA evidence and let out of prison and a short time later he killed a young woman. Some of the wrongly convicted had been in trouble several times before, which was part of why they were suspected in the first place of the crime for which they were wrongly convicted.

Thanks for the thorough and thoughtful comments. This is an issue that bothers me a lot. Financial compensation is definitely warranted but there has to be a program to give back as much of the lost quality of life as possible.
(Counseling, life coaching, accelerated training, tax incentives to companies that provide career opportunities)

I have no easy answers here. I just know that if you don't go killing people via the death penalty, it's a lot easier to do something for them if than if they're dead.

Many have provided some great solutions. I don't think I have anything to add to them.

there is nothing that can repay the wasted years unfortunately. Giving them money helps but doesn't give them the life skills that help them live on the outside again. Getting the community to accept their innocence is also another issue to deal with.

This is a terrible thing and I agree that that person can never be repayed for lost time. I am very thankful that we have more reliable technology to prove innocence or guilt.
On the flip side, I think a lot more people who are guilty are let off than innocent being incarcerated. As much as I hate to think of a person being jailed unjustly, I also hate to think of murderers and rapists being set free to offend again.

Although I hate to see criminals go free, I think it's 100 times worse to put an innocent person in jail. Maybe there should be some consequences for the police and prosecuters who are not conscientious enough to make sure this doesn't happen.

Linda, if they did that, it would just make it easier for criminals to get off. Actually, I think that being a police officer or prosecuting attorney is hard enough without having to deal with the consequences of a wrongful conviction. What would they do next? Punish the jury who convicted the person?

I see where you're coming from Sandra.
But police are under pressure to arrest and prosecutors are under pressure to convict. In response to that pressure they may identify a suspect and push to get that person convicted whether he's guilty or not. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain to make an arrest and get the case off their plate.