News

A shameful failure

A Times Editorial
Published May 9, 2005

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It was shameful that the Legislature did not provide for compensating Wilton Dedge or extending the Oct. 1 deadline for DNA testing that could free other innocent people from prison. Both failures were deliberate. It is impossible to understand or excuse the cruel indifference of the House leadership to the fact that Dedge and his parents deserve, at a minimum, to recoup legal expenses and the income he was denied during the 22 years he was incarcerated for someone else's crime.

The Senate passed a wonderfully fair and creative bill by Sen. Daniel Webster, R-Winter Garden, that would have allowed Dedge, and the others everyone knows will follow, to submit documented claims to the attorney general for lost income, legal expenses, and other quantifiable costs. The House did not consider it, voting instead to set up what Webster called a "glorified claims bill" procedure that would make Dedge wait another year for money that might not be awarded even then.

Webster said Dedge "deserves compensation now." He and the Senate decided correctly, however, that it was better to pass nothing than the House's devious scheme. Dedge's lawyers will now sue the state under the same legal theory underlying Webster's bill: that a person's liberty is no less valuable than land taken for a highway or orange trees destroyed to stop citrus canker. The state pays promptly for those because property rights are not subject to the arcane concept of sovereign immunity. When Dedge's law suit is filed, Attorney General Charlie Crist should concede the analogy.

The DNA testing deadline will also be litigated. Otherwise, Florida would commit theIt is impossible to understand or excuse the cruel indifference of the House leadership to the fact that Wilton Dedge deserves, at a minimum, to recoup legal expenses and the income he was denied during the 22 years he was incarcerated for someone else's crime.

unconscionable crime of suppressing potential evidence of actual innocence. Once again, the Supreme Court will have to make up for what the Legislature did not do. The attorney general should concede that point too, and has indicated that he might. But only legislation could qualify Florida for the DNA testing grants that President Bush has asked Congress to appropriate. Legislative leaders claim they were alerted too late to act this year. That dubious excuse will be no good at all next year. They are on notice now.

[Last modified May 9, 2005, 01:54:14]

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