Man wrongly jailed for three years charged £7,000 by Home Office for ‘board and lodging’
‘Wrongly jailed after a woman cried rape, Warren Blackwell applied for compensation for his three wasted years in prison.
Torn from his family and sent to languish in jail as a convicted sex attacker, the innocent father-of-two imagined he was due a hefty sum for the miscarriage of justice.
Instead, he was flabbergasted to learn the Home Office now intends to charge him nearly £7,000 for “board and lodging”.
The money is for the cost of food and accommodation while he was behind bars, and will be deducted from whatever compensation he receives for wrongly imprisonment.’
January 3rd, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Although this case exposes the outlandish miscarriage of justice towards the wrongly accused in the UK, we wish this were an isolated incident. The fact is, even in the United States, restitution for those incarcerated is certainly not guaranteed.
In fact, in many states, there are more government resources for those released on parole than there are for those who have been wrongly incarcerated and later exonerated and released.
Currently, an overwhelming number of people who have been exonerated of a crime are not compensated for the toll the incarceration took on their lives socially and economically.
Thus far, only 22 states in the US have laws in place to provide some level of compensation for those who were wrongly convicted. This means a majority of those who went back to court and proved their innocence are then required to sue for this compensation.
This process utilizes significant resources that a recently released inmate typically does not have. For those who do have the knowledge or financial ability to bring a case, the enormous cost of the additional legal wrangling involved may soak up much of the payout. Many victims of this outrageous process are handed the more daunting challenge of simply restoring their name, let alone consideration of a lawsuit that may or may not result in restitution for the time that has been lost.
What’s more, the payout often times received is meager in comparison to what is usually lost. Marty Tankleff for example was sentenced to a New York state prison after being wrongly convicted of killing his parents. Although his case was recently overturned, Marty just recently visited his parent’s graves for the first time since their deaths.
Ronnie Taylor, a Houston man who was recently exonerated of a crime he didn’t commit was engaged to be married before his arrest in 1993. DNA testing proved his innocence 14 years later – allowing him to finally marry his bride Jeanette Brown. (source)
The Innocence Protect, one organization established in 1992 utilizes DNA testing as a means to force new hearings for those who are wrongly accused. It’s website lists hundreds of cases of wrongly convicted individuals who’s cases were overturned after a conviction.
While the Weekly Vice does not subscribe to every point of view of the Project’s mission statement, one has to wonder where our culture would be without such advocates. Many wrongfully accused individuals have languished in prison for decades before their faulty convictions were tossed out.
Here are a few more examples of justice gone horribly wrong:
Dennis Brown from Louisiana was convicted of a 1984 rape and spent 19 years in prison before DNA testing confirmed that he could not have been the rapist.
Marvin Anderson became the ninety-ninth person in the US to be exonerated of a crime due to post-conviction DNA testing. Even when another individual confessed to the crime Lamont was accused of, the Judge upheld the conviction until DNA evidence finally confirmed Lamont’s innocence. He wasn’t exonerated until 1992, nearly 20 years after his arrest.
Orlando Boquete’s wrongful conviction of attempted sexual battery was vacated a staggering 24 years after his arrest back in 1982.
Robert Clark, wrongly convicted of rape, kidnapping and armed robbery in 1982, languished in prison primarily by mistaken eyewitness. Mistaken identity seems to be a common theme with the cases that later get overturned by post-conviction DNA evidence. Clark was finally vindicated 24 years later.
Luis Diaz was wrongly convicted in 1980 as the ‘Bird Road Rapist’, where 25 women were attacked, many of them sexually assaulted. Diaz was convicted for 8 of them. His case was overturned 25 years later in 2005.
Conclusion:
These are only a handful of the cases you can view HERE, however they are a sampling of the many instances where our legal system goes horribly wrong to such degree that compensation for one’s life cannot be calculated as a mere loss of wages as most restitution awarding states provide.
The Weekly Vice supports tough sentencing guidelines for all sexual assault cases, particularly those of minor children. We also believe however, that states should be equally aggressive with some level of state subsidy, restitution or other adjudged compensation that is deemed appropriate for each individual case. A dismal 22 states is not a goodwill showing for a nation who prides itself on a Justice For All philosophy.
Danny Vice
The Weekly Vice
http://weeklyvice.blogspot.com