The Innocence Project of Texas

The State of Texas currently provides exonerees $50,000 per year for each year that they were incarcerated on a wrongful conviction ($100,000 if they were sentenced to death).  However, the compensation statute requires that exonerees who apply for compensation waive all rights to civil litigation in their cases.  In addition, high tax rates on the lump sum payments under the current compensation statute make the actual amount received by the wrongfully convicted much less than the $50,000 promised to them.

Accordingly, several Texas exonerees are joining together to ask the Texas Legislature for an increase in the compensation funding amount.  The Associated Press reports:

A group of exonerated men freed by DNA evidence in Texas has dropped a series of lawsuits while its members seek a bill to increase compensation from the state that wrongly imprisoned them.

In the past week, at least six exonerated men have had their federal civil-rights lawsuits dismissed or settled. West Texas attorney Kevin Glasheen, who represents 12 wrongly convicted men, said all the lawsuits are on hold.

“If the Legislature will increase state compensation, we will accept that in lieu of civil-rights litigation,” Glasheen said.

Advocacy groups, including the Innocence Project of Texas, are pushing the Legislature for a bill that would increase payments from the state from $50,000 for each year of imprisonment to $250,000 per year, with half paid in a lump sum and the other half paid in annuities.

The exonerated men will be able to refile their lawsuits if the Legislature does not pass a new bill, which Glasheen estimated would cost $15 million to $20 million.

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