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Make compensation fair, automatic
A Times Editorial
Published April 14, 2005
In separate ways, House and Senate committees acknowledged this week that Florida owes decent compensation to people like Wilton Dedge, imprisoned 22 years for a crime he didn't commit. The absurd notion of a $200,000 limit was properly discarded by a unanimous vote of the Justice Appropriations Committee. "Any amount stinks if you're rotting in prison," remarked Rep. Juan-Carlos Planas, R-Miami. Future legislatures would decide the sums case by case.
The Senate version (SB 1964) is conceptually better despite a $5-million ceiling proposed by its author, Judiciary Chairman Dan Webster, R-Winter Garden. Compensation would be automatic and presumably prompt after a judge certified the ex-prisoner was innocent. The state would pay for lost income, legal expenses, psychological counseling and other tangible costs that could be documented or fairly estimated.
But it should be the chief financial officer rather than the attorney general who decides what to pay. As the officer who defends all appeals, the attorney general has most likely worked to prolong the innocent person's imprisonment. Such institutionalized resistance cost Dedge eight extra years. The chief financial officer would not have such a conflict. Webster's bill also excludes people who pleaded guilty. That too should be changed, because even innocent people have pleaded guilty to ease their sentences.
Despite that, Webster's approach is superior to the House's proposed joint legislative rule (HCR 1879) that would make Dedge and other claimants wait up to a year for a claims bill that might not pass, given the Legislature's hostility to claims bills in general.
Legal scholars recognize, as one once wrote, that "a system that never caught any innocent people would probably catch few guilty ones." But when society does make such a mistake, it should pay fair compensation without quibbling and without delay. Florida should join the 20 states that already attempt to do so.
[Last modified April 14, 2005, 01:15:22]
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