Complicated Mercy: Compensating the Wrongfully Convicted in Georgia

• Publication year: 2022

Complicated Mercy: Compensating the Wrongfully Convicted in Georgia

Elizabeth O'Roark
University of Georgia School of Law

Complicated Mercy: Compensating the Wrongfully Convicted in Georgia

Cover Page Footnote
J.D., 2022, University of Georgia School of Law; B.A., 2018, University of Virginia. I worked at the Georgia Innocence Project as an undergraduate. I would like to thank Clare Gilbert and Hayden Davis at the Georgia Innocence Project and Professor Melissa Redmon at the University of Georgia School of Law for their help in the note-writing process. This Note is dedicated to my family and friends for their support and to all exonerees in Georgia.

COMPLICATED MERCY: COMPENSATING THE WRONGFULLY CONVICTED IN

GEORGIA

Elizabeth O'Roark^*

[Page 1323]

An exoneree's story does not end when they walk out of prison and back into society. After spending years in prison for a crime they did not commit, the exoneree must rebuild a life with years of lost income, little credit, and no retirement. Georgia is one of the few states that does not have a statute setting out how to fairly and efficiently compensate its exonerees. Exonerees must instead ask state representatives to present a resolution to the General Assembly. If the resolution passes through both chambers of the legislature, then the exoneree can receive some compensation for the trauma and loss suffered from the wrongful conviction. This confusing process results in inconsistent outcomes for exonerees, influenced by the political climate of a particular legislative session. Georgia should look to states with compensation statutes, learn from them, and pass a bill of its own. Several representatives tried to do so in the 2022 Legislative Session. House Bill 1354 passed the House but never made it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. This Note discusses the strengths and weaknesses of that bill and improvements that could be made next term to enable it to pass through the Georgia General Assembly.

[Page 1324]

Table of Contents

I. Introduction..................................................................1326

II. Background..................................................................1331

A. causes of wrongful action...............................1331

1. Eyewitness Misidentification.........................1331
2. Prosecutorial and Police Misconduct.............1333
3. Junk Science...................................................1335
4. False Confessions............................................1337

B. the policies behind compensating exonerees 1338
C. overview of compensation methods................1340

1. Lawsuits..........................................................1340
2. Private Legislation..........................................1343
3. Statutes...........................................................1345

III. Evaluating State Wrongful Conviction Statutes ....................................................................................... 1347

A. breadth of coverage: how many are compensated?......................................................1347

1. Burden of Proof...............................................1348
2. Restrictions...................................................... 1350

B. quality of the remedy: how much?..................1352

1. Financial Remedy...........................................1352
2. Services............................................................ 1353

C. choice: who decides?..........................................1354

IV. Current Compensation Process in Georgia...........1354

V. 2022 Legislative Session: The Wrongful Conviction Compensation Act.......................................................1356

A. the bill's strengths...........................................1359
B. the bill's weaknesses........................................1361

VI. Revising the Wrongful Conviction Compensation Act................................................................................1362

[Page 1325]

A. proposed changes to h.b. 1354.......................... 1363

1. Including Government Services in Award and Allowing for Choice Between the Services.... 1363
2. Amount of Award............................................1364
3. Ensuring that the State Pays the Exoneree the Present Value of the Award if the Award is Paid Out Through an Annuity..............................1365
4. Statute of Limitations.....................................1366

VII. Conclusion.................................................................1366

[Page 1326]

I. Introduction

Three innocent men exonerated by DNA evidence walked up the grand stairs to the Georgia Capitol¹ : Clarence Harrison,² Douglas Echols,³ and Samuel Scott.⁴ When they walked back out hours later, the legislature had awarded Harrison one million dollars but had awarded Echols and Scott nothing.⁵

Their stories begin with women surviving brutal sexual assaults. First, in 1986, a young woman waited outside a night club in Savannah, Georgia.⁶ Three men kidnapped her and took her to a house where two men raped her.⁷ She managed to escape and reach the authorities.⁸ Almost nine months later and 250 miles away, another woman was waiting at a bus stop on a rainy night in Decatur, Georgia⁹ when an attacker hit her in the face, dragged her to an embankment, and raped and sodomized her.¹⁰ He took her to two different locations before leaving her with two broken teeth and

[Page 1327]

taking her wristwatch.¹¹ These horrific attacks spawned three more tragedies—the wrongful convictions of Echols and Scott in Savannah and Harrison in Decatur.¹²

Both prosecutions centered on the victim's identification of a perpetrator.¹³ In Savannah, after contacting the police, the victim led officers back to the house that she thought the men who had kidnapped her brought her to.¹⁴ The police found Scott, who owned the house, and Echols inside.¹⁵ The victim identified Echols as the man who held her down during the second assault.¹⁶ Later in the investigation, she identified Scott as one of her rapists from a photo array.¹⁷ In Decatur, the victim identified Clarence Harrison—also from a photo array—after police heard a rumor that someone at Harrison's home was trying to sell the watch stolen from the victim (to this day, the watch has never been found).¹⁸ Harrison's prosecution was also based on faulty analysis of the DNA evidence that would later exonerate him.¹⁹ Juries convicted all three men.²⁰ Scott was sentenced to life.²¹ Echols was sentenced to fifteen years.²² Harrison was sentenced to life plus twenty years.²³

[Page 1328]

Yet, years later, all three men were exonerated by DNA evidence in rape kits.²⁴ After Scott reached out to the Innocence Project in 1996, student interns there found the rape kit that prosecutors used as evidence that the victim had been raped²⁵ —but that had not been tested to reveal who raped her—and submitted the evidence in the kit for testing in 2001.²⁶ The DNA testing excluded both Scott and Echols as the Savannah victim's attackers.²⁷ Two years later, in 2003, Harrison wrote to the Georgia Innocence Project.²⁸ Although the district attorney's office told Harrison throughout the 1990s that the rape kit had been destroyed, Georgia Innocence Project interns and attorneys found it, and testing proved that Harrison could not have contributed the sperm in the kit.²⁹

In many ways, these cases are similar. Echols, Scott, and Harrison were all identified by rape victims as perpetrators of their assaults, convicted because of testimony to that fact, and exonerated by DNA evidence. But, at this point, Harrison's story diverges from Echols's and Scott's. The Georgia legislature awarded Harrison compensation for his wrongful conviction, but chose not to compensate Scott or Echols for their wrongful convictions.³⁰

[Page 1329]

Exonerees³¹ do not have a statutory right to receive compensation in Georgia.³² Instead, in an unpredictable process subject to political whims and the state budget each year, a wrongfully convicted person must proceed through a state claims advisory board process and find a legislator to introduce and sponsor a private compensation bill into the Georgia General Assembly.³³ Spencer Lawton, the district attorney in Scott and Echols's case, not only opposed compensation but actively spread falsehoods to block it.³⁴ He "held comparable sway with" the lawmakers, who were concerned with appearing "soft on crime."³⁵ He sent a letter to the legislators claiming that Echols and Scott were still under the indictment for kidnapping and rape, even though his office had dismissed the charges.³⁶ Three innocent men appeared before the legislature seeking compensation for spending years of their lives in prison for crimes they did not commit, and two left empty handed with no recognition for the injustices they suffered.

This Note recommends that the Georgia legislature pass a statute devising a scheme for compensating the wrongfully convicted. If the Georgia legislature passes such a statute, it will make the process of compensating exonerees more just and efficient in three ways. First, the statute will provide the state with a set structure for compensating exonerees, so an exoneree's

[Page 1330]

compensation will reflect the legal factors in their case and not the politics of the day. Second, the statute will allow the decision-making body to review claims quickly and evenhandedly. Third, the statute will enhance efficiency by enabling the legislature to set a schema for executive action rather than having to resolve each exoneree's case individually.

Part II briefly discusses the factors that contribute to wrongful convictions and examples of such factors in Georgia. Part II further discusses the policy reasons behind compensating the wrongfully convicted and explains the methods that exonerees have used to obtain compensation for their wrongful convictions: lawsuits, statutes, and private legislation. Part III compares state compensation...