Latest news with #MarioStinchcomb
Miami Herald
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
New Georgia law could help wrongfully convicted seek recompense
ATLANTA - In most states, when someone has been wrongfully convicted, exonerated by a court and freed from prison - often after being incarcerated for decades - the state will compensate them for the years they lost. Beginning this year, Georgia will join the 38 other states that have a standardized way of compensating those who've served time in prison for crimes they say they didn't commit and the courts have released them from incarceration. People released from prison will soon be able to petition for compensation through the Office of State Administrative Hearings and begin to rebuild their lives. The law, which was proposed in Senate Bill 244, aims to fix what lawmakers have called a "very laborious process" that can sometimes become political and many are often hesitant to get involved with. Georgia has not compensated anyone who has been exonerated by a court and released from prison since 2022. But that's not because people haven't tried. Mario Stinchcomb was 23 years old when he was arrested in 2002 and charged with murder. In 2004, he was sentenced to life in prison. Then, in 2021, he became the first person to be exonerated through the Fulton County Conviction Integrity Unit. The unit is made up of a team within the district attorney's office that investigates claims of wrongful convictions. Stinchcomb was 41 when he was released from prison. Stinchcomb has petitioned the state for the past several years seeking compensation for the time the courts said he wrongfully spent in prison. Each year, his request stalled. Upon hearing the news that a new system would be put in place to take the process out of the Legislature, Stinchcomb said he was cautiously optimistic about his future. "It is a blessing for all of those who have been in prison, whether it's a lengthy time or a short time, (who have) just been in prison for something you did not do," he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "This is a major steppingstone for the Georgia system - being able to be (compensated) when you've been taken away from society for so long." Kristin Verrill, executive director of Georgia Innocence Project, said the process for exonerees to seek compensation was "simply broken." The nonprofit organization she leads uses DNA evidence and research to clear people's names. "It was arbitrary and unpredictable and highly politicized," she said. "This new process uses the administrative law procedures that are already in place under Georgia law and create a neutral fact finder whose profession it is to be a fact finder and interpret laws, instead of a legislator having to be faced with those decisions." The new procedure will allow someone who has been exonerated to file a claim with the Office of State Administrative Hearings. That claim would be evaluated by an administrative law judge. If the person who'd been released from prison can prove their innocence, they would be eligible to receive $75,000 per year of incarceration. They would be eligible for another $25,000 per year if they served their time on death row. These cases often involve people who've spent upward of 20 years in prison. The process would return to the General Assembly, though, which would have to include any payment in the state budget. Terry Talley was 23 in 1981 when he was convicted of a series of LaGrange sexual assaults that he insists he didn't commit. It resulted in four life sentences. A DNA test in 2009 proved he didn't commit one of the crimes, but he still had three life sentences from the other assaults that didn't have DNA evidence. It took 12 more years before the local law enforcement agency that initially arrested Talley worked with defense attorneys to persuade a judge to agree to exonerate him in three related cases. The district attorney didn't challenge the release but said the decision should not be considered an endorsement of Talley's innocence in the whole case. Talley said it was "about time" the state enact a new process for compensating those who've served years in prison before being exonerated and released. "I feel like all those who get their cases back in court and get exonerated, they got something to live for now," he said. The process Talley, Stinchcomb and other exonerated people have previously undergone has been called arduous by supporters of the new law. Once a judge or prosecutor has thrown out the charges against someone who had been convicted, they must find a legislator who is willing to sponsor a resolution that would compensate them. That process often gets bogged down by politics. State Rep. Katie Dempsey, a Republican who sponsored the legislation that became the language in SB 244, said it was not easy for the men who've been waiting years to be compensated by a state that had wrongfully taken decades from their lives. "Now we have another opportunity to allow for people proven innocent to have a true chance that is not a retrial from legislators, but a fact-finding process and decision from an administrative law judge valuing the opinion of other judges," she said. There's been a bottleneck in the Senate with some Republican leaders declining to pass legislation compensating those exonerated and released from prison. Senate Majority Whip Randy Robertson, a Republican who is a former sheriff's deputy, has spent the past several legislative sessions opposing the procedural change offered by House members. This year, he proposed his own version. That bill didn't gain any traction. Robertson said for the past few years, he's pulled the case files for each person who's seeking compensation and gone back through them to determine if they are truly innocent. He said someone being released from prison because a district attorney declines to retry a case because of a technicality or because it has been so long since the original trial that the original witnesses are dead does not mean they've been exonerated. After years of blocks, House GOP leadership inserted the language of Dempsey's bill to overhaul the wrongful conviction compensation process to legislation that was heavily supported by Senate Republicans: a bill allowing criminal defendants to recover attorney fees and legal costs if the prosecutor of their case is disqualified for misconduct and the case is dismissed. That means the new law could allow President Donald Trump to recoup his attorney fees if Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is disqualified in the case related to Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden in Georgia. During the debate of SB 244, Robertson said that, while he opposed the amendment to the bill, he supported the original topic enough to vote for the legislation. "We'll tackle the other thing that's attached to it, and we'll come up with a process that works," he said. "So understand, if anybody in this state is innocent (and) they're convicted, we should make sure that we take care of them," he said. "We should make sure they have due process, but we need to do it the right way. And we need to start remembering that for every crime there is - and there are 50,000 people in the Georgia Department of Corrections - means there are thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands of crime victims - if they are alive - walking the streets of this state, looking for somebody to stand up for them." State Rep. Scott Holcomb, a Democrat who has worked on the issue for years and was a cosponsor on Dempsey's bill, said having the procedural change pass the Legislature was "a long time coming." "This is going to mean a lot for the people who need it," he said. "No compensation claims have been approved since 2022, and there are several who are clearly innocent and will benefit from this. So I'm glad that now they can present their case and have an opportunity to receive compensation. This doesn't guarantee that they'll prevail, but it gives them an outlet to be heard." Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Georgia House OKs bill to overhaul wrongly convicted payout after splicing to Trump-inspired vehicle
Mario Stinchcomb was exonerated for a 2002 murder conviction. He recently appeared at a press conference to support a formula for the wrongfully incarcerated to get compensation for lost years. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder The Georgia House passed a bill Wednesday that seeks to overhaul the compensation process allowing the state to pay wrongfully convicted Georgians, a system that has long relied on individual resolutions to pay people who were locked up and later exonerated. Republican lawmakers in the state House prevailed in a contentious 244-61 vote after legislators spliced it onto a bill aimed at allowing criminal defendants to recoup their legal costs if the prosecuting attorney in their case is disqualified for personal or professional misconduct. The original wrongful compensation bill, House Bill 533, stalled in the House on Crossover Day, March 7, passing out of the chamber's Judiciary Non-Civil Committee but never appearing on the floor for a vote. Previous versions of the bill have faced fierce opposition in the Senate, particularly by Sen. Randy Robertson, a Cataula Republican and former law enforcement officer who has repeatedly raised questions about the innocence of convicts who he says could be exonerated by the courts on a legal technicality. But attached to Senate Bill 244, which the bill's lead sponsor Sen. Brandon Beach said is inspired by President Donald Trump's election interference case in Georgia, it may face a smoother path to success. As one of only a few states without a designated statute in place to compensate wrongfully convicted citizens, Georgia's wrongfully incarcerated residents face an uphill battle when attempting to secure compensation. That's on top of the already complex, often yearslong process prisoners must undertake in order to get a conviction overturned. Once they've secured their freedom, those who have been wrongfully convicted must then find a state representative who is willing to sponsor an individual compensation resolution for them and file a claim with Georgia's Claims Advisory Board. For any claims over $5,000 — which encompasses most, if not all wrongful conviction cases — the advisory board will then make a recommendation to the legislature, which apportions compensation funds as part of the annual state budget. 'Certainly, this process is not meant for wrongful conviction,' said Maggie Hasty, who oversees claims for the Secretary of State's office. 'It is meant for people who have monetary claims against state agencies.' Following the Advisory Board's recommendations, those resolutions then go through the full legislative process and must pass committees and floor votes in both the House and Senate before they can take effect. Advocates have criticized the current system, arguing that it results in unequal treatment between exonerees and subjects individual compensation resolutions to legislators' political whims. But under the language in HB 533, sponsored by Rome Republican Rep. Katie Dempsey, the pathway would be streamlined. The bill would establish a new process under Georgia state law for people who have been exonerated, allowing administrative law judges — rather than the Claims Advisory Board — to rule on wrongful conviction compensation cases. It would also award a standardized rate of $75,000 for each year of incarceration to each exoneree, with an additional $25,000 added for each year spent on death row. For Dempsey, who sponsored two individual compensation resolutions for residents of Floyd County in addition to the Wrongful Conviction Compensation Act, 'a wrongful conviction is unimaginable.' 'I often put myself in those shoes — because it could happen to any of us, or our children, or someone we love or care about,' she said, adding, 'I wouldn't last ten minutes in prison and you all know that. I would need a lot more than money to make me whole.' For the five citizens hoping to seek compensation this year, however, time may already have run out. On Crossover Day, lawmakers combined five individual compensation resolutions into House Resolution 128, which passed overwhelmingly in the House but did not receive a hearing on the Senate side until Tuesday, after the deadline to add it to the Senate calendar had passed. The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Compensation, which Robertson chairs, began its hearing at 6 a.m. on Tuesday morning, ultimately concluding after more than four hours of testimony without a final vote. 'We rush too many things through this building without having legitimate, deep-dive conversations about it,' Robertson said, comparing the combined bill to a 'bastard son.' For House Democrats, who have overwhelmingly supported compensating those who are wrongfully convicted in previous bienniums, the marriage between the wrongful conviction act and a bill aimed at compensating President Donald Trump presented a philosophical dilemma. According to state Sen. Brandon Beach, an Alpharetta Republican and staunch Trump ally who was recently appointed by the president to serve as U.S. Treasurer, SB 244 was directly inspired by Trump's election interference case in Georgia, in which Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was disqualified after an appeals court judge found that her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade created a ''significant' appearance of impropriety.' Under SB 244, attorney's fees and other costs would come out of county prosecutors' budgets, which Democrats fear could have a disproportionate impact on smaller counties with more limited budgets, and discourage prosecutors from tackling complex or high-profile cases. In a scathing Minority Report, state Rep. Shea Roberts, an Atlanta Democrat, condemned the combination of the two pieces of legislation. 'I wanted to believe that we were better than this,' she said. 'I held out hope that the majority party in this chamber would not use its legislative power for blatant political retribution. And tacking the Wrongfully Incarcerated Compensation bipartisan bill that our colleagues have worked tirelessly to pass for years onto this punitive SB 244 makes me physically sick.' The bill would also directly benefit a sitting legislator: Sen. Shawn Still, a Johns Creek Republican, was indicted in the Fulton County election interference case alongside Trump and 17 other codefendants. If the bill passes, he too may be able to recoup the cost of his legal fees. But state Rep. Scott Holcomb, an Atlanta Democrat who sponsored two previous versions of the Wrongful Conviction Compensation Act, urged his colleagues to vote in favor of the bill. The current compensation process 'has been candidly broken for a very, very long time,' he said. 'What it leads to is inconsistent results: some people get compensation, some people don't. Some people get a certain amount of compensation, some people get less, some people get more.' He also highlighted the repeated issues he's faced getting the Senate to consider any form of compensation for the wrongfully convicted. 'What's happened since 2022 is no resolutions have moved, period, in the senate,' he said. 'They haven't entertained them, they haven't considered them. Last year they didn't even have hearings for measures that were passed here.' Though the vast majority of Democrats voted against the bill, Holcomb and Dempsey are optimistic that combining the two bills will improve their chances of establishing change by the end of the 2025 legislative session. 'I don't like being sideways with the majority of my caucus,' Holcomb said after the bill passed on the House floor. 'But at the same token, when all is said and done, and when I leave this building for good, there's going to be very few things that I've worked on that will have been incredibly consequential. This will be one of them, and so I had to continue to support it, and I'll continue to support it, and I really hope that it gets to the finish line this year.' The legislation now returns to the Senate, which must agree to the amended House version before the bill can advance to the governor's desk. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Supporters hope third time's a charm for Georgia lawmakers to OK wrongful conviction compensation
Mario Stinchcomb was exonerated for a 2002 murder conviction. Ross WIlliams/Georgia Recorder How much money is a year of your life worth? That's the math lawmakers at the Georgia Capitol are grappling with this week as they seek to pass legislation that would change how the state compensates those it has wrongly incarcerated. House Bill 533 is now making its third trip through the Georgia Legislature, with sponsors on both sides of the aisle hoping for its smooth passage. Under current Georgia law, those who have been wrongfully convicted must find a state representative who is willing to sponsor an individual compensation resolution for them and file a claim with Georgia's Claims Advisory Board. Those resolutions then go through the full legislative process and must pass committees and floor votes in both the House and Senate before they can take effect. As of December 2024, Georgia is one of only 11 states that does not have a law in place to compensate the wrongfully convicted. But this year's legislation, sponsored by Rome Republican Rep. Katie Dempsey, aims to change that by establishing a standardized process under Georgia state law for people who have been exonerated. The bill would allow administrative law judges — rather than the Claims Advisory Board — to rule on wrongful conviction compensation cases and award a standardized rate of $75,000 for each year of incarceration to each exoneree, with an additional $25,000 added for each year spent on death row. By standardizing the process of seeking compensation, Georgia can avoid some of the inequities that come from having compensation awarded on a case-by-case basis through the Legislature. Advocates like Hayden Davis, a board member of the Georgia Innocence Project who helped draft the bill, are hopeful that HB 533 will make it through both chambers before lawmakers adjourn on April 4, arguing that Georgia's existing systems are not well-equipped to handle these types of cases. 'What we've seen in a lot of years is resolutions failing, not because of any weakness of the underlying claim, but because of political reasons,' Davis said, adding that the jam-packed 40-day legislative calendar can pose another obstacle. 'So the results of this existing ad hoc process is extremely inefficient, it's inconsistent and it's fundamentally unfair.' And for exonerees like Michael Woolfolk, who was wrongfully convicted of the 2002 murder of Jaketha Young in Atlanta alongside fellow exoneree Mario Stinchcomb, those inconsistencies can have dramatic consequences. Woolfolk, whose individual compensation resolution has been sponsored by Rep. Stacey Evans, an Atlanta Democrat, said he is seeking compensation for the third time after two previous compensation resolutions had stalled in the Senate. 'It's been frustrating,' he told reporters. 'I've been trying to figure out how to keep myself together, but it's kind of hard to start a career after 40. So I just try to take it step by step and just try to find jobs to keep me above average.' Though HB 533 is likely to clear the House, it may face an uphill battle in the Senate, where previous versions of the bill (as well as individual compensation resolutions) have been stalled by Republican opposition. Though the bill would only compensate wrongly incarcerated people who have established actual innocence, Sen. Randy Robertson, a Cataula Republican and former law enforcement officer, has repeatedly voiced concerns over whether people who are receiving compensation are truly innocent or instead freed on a legal technicality. 'My concerns about the bill is how we define 'exonerated,'' he said. 'To me, exonerated is, you bring real evidence showing that an individual did not commit the crime. Exonerated does not mean a technical failure by the juror or a misstatement by a prosecutor while charging the juror, or some other technical failure within the court.' This year, he also introduced a competing version of the bill, SB 176, which restricts the eligibility requirements for exonerees even further, and offers only $50,000 per year of wrongful incarceration. The bill has not yet cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee. However, according to HB 533 cosponsor Rep. Scott Holcomb, an Atlanta Democrat, the bill has also been updated since its initial introduction in 2022 to incorporate feedback he's received on the bill over past legislative sessions. A former prosecutor, Holcomb said he is optimistic about the bill's prospects this year, despite the competing Senate counterpart. 'I am encouraged that [the Senate] had a bill that was filed,' he said. 'That shows that they're looking at the issue, and it's something that we've certainly studied very hard. I think the proposal that we've put forth this year has incorporated a number of good ideas that people brought forward and, I think, improve upon prior versions of the bill.' And while advocates acknowledge that there is no way to fully undo a wrongful conviction, they hope that future exonerees in Georgia will have a smoother path to justice. 'No amount of money can return those years lost,' Davis said. 'But what we can do is provide some resources to help folks rebuild the lives that they've been unjustly deprived of for so long, and that's what this bill would do. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
