In August 2011, a trio of Arkansas state prisoners, widely known as the West Memphis Three, walked out of prison after serving more than 18 years for a brutal triple homicide they did not commit. They were not exonerated, however, and are still seeking justice.

In May 1993 the bodies of three 8-year-old Cub Scouts, Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Stevie Branch, were found in a drainage ditch near West Memphis, Arkansas. They had been stripped naked, bound and murdered. Three local teenagers, Michael Wayne “Damien” Echols, 18, Charles Jason Baldwin, 16, and Jessie L. Misskelley, Jr., 17, were arrested for the crime. Echols was considered a suspect because he wore black clothing, liked heavy metal music and had an interest in the occult.

Misskelley, who had a low I.Q., allegedly confessed to participating in the murders and implicated Baldwin and Echols. However, his “confession” was obtained during an almost 12-hour-long police interrogation that included leading and coaching by detectives, and contained obvious inconsistencies. He later recanted and refused to testify against his co-defendants.

Prosecutors alleged the murders were part of a Satantic ritual and claimed that Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley were part of a Satanic cult. Despite a dearth ...

by Matt Clarke

A succession of laws, cumulating in the most generous compensation package for wrongly convicted prisoners in the nation, has left Texas exonerees stuck at different levels of compensation depending on when they were proven innocent. Consequently, some earlier exonerees now claim they should receive compensation at the current higher rate.

Initially, Texas had no compensation law for wrongly convicted prisoners, and the only way for exonerees to recover damages for the time they spent in prison was to file a lawsuit. Even then, Texas juries rarely granted meaningful compensation. Between 1985 and 2001 only two exonerees were successful, receiving a combined total of $50,970.

Starting in 1992, Texas exonerees could apply for compensation of up to $25,000 for pain and suffering, with their total damages capped at $250,000 – provided they had pleaded not guilty and received a full pardon from the governor.

In 2001 the compensation was raised to $25,000 per year of wrongful incarceration with a cap of $500,000. The compensation amount was increased again in 2007 to $50,000 per year ($100,000 per year if on death row), with no cap. And in 2009 Texas lawmakers changed the compensation statute to $80,000 per year of ...

In September 2011, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office (VCSO) agreed to settle a class-action civil rights lawsuit alleging that innocent people had been jailed when VCSO officials failed and/or refused to use readily available technological means (such as fingerprint identification) to verify that people being booked into the Ventura County ...

A District of Columbia (D.C.) federal jury has awarded $2.3 million to a former prisoner who spent ten years in prison after his parole was wrongfully revoked based on unreliable hearsay evidence.

Charles Singletary was convicted of robbery, armed robbery and assault in D.C. Superior Court. He was paroled in ...

The Georgia Supreme Court has held that a court clerk is not entitled to official immunity in a lawsuit claiming negligent performance of a ministerial duty. At the heart of the case was the clerk’s failure to inform prison officials about a court order that reduced a prisoner’s sentence.

Calvin McGee filed suit against Juanita Hicks and Geneva Blanton, in their respective capacities as clerk of the Superior Court of Fulton County and an employee of that office, for negligence for failing to perform their ministerial duty under OCGA § 42-5-50(a), which requires the court clerk to notify the commissioner of the Department of Corrections within 30 working days following receipt of a prisoner’s sentence.

The trial judge had signed a one-page “amended order” that changed McGee’s sentence to provide for a May 27, 2001 maximum release date rather than a previously-ordered release date of June 27, 2003. Blanton received the order on July 20, 2000; she placed it in processing to be filed and took no other action. McGee was not released from prison until March 2003 – 22 months after his amended release date.

Blanton and Hicks moved to dismiss the claim against them in their individual capacity, ...

by Matt Clarke

On June 6, 2011, the Better Government Association (BGA) and the Center on Wrongful Convictions (CWC) at Northwestern University School of Law released a joint report on the cost of wrongful convictions. The report, which examined 85 wrongful convictions in Illinois since the advent of modern DNA ...

On April 25, 2011, Raymond D. Towler, 53, received a settlement of $2,592,571 after serving almost 29 years for a rape he didn’t commit. The award included a $600,000 annuity to provide ongoing monthly payments plus a $1.91 million lump sum payment; $78,800 of the settlement went to Towler’s attorneys ...

By Derek Gilna

In a well-reasoned opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has permitted a Section 1983 action against the Boston Police Department (BPD) to continue. James Haley had accused the BPD of concealing exculpatory evidence that resulted in him serving over thirty years for a murder that he did not commit. Haley had already been released from prison when, according to the opinion, "the discovery of previously undisclosed evidence resulted in the vacation of his conviction."

Haley had been convicted of the July 11, 1971 murder of David Myers, in large part based upon the false testimony of a witness who claimed that she had seen him at the scene of the murder, supposedly brandishing a gun and a knife. Prior to trial, Haley's attorney had filed with the court a blanket motion for discovery for production of all evidence, including that favorable to the defense, including potential impeachment material. The state, in its response to this discovery request, did not furnish the original statements made by the alleged witnesses relating to Haley, which differed substantially from their subsequent testimony at his trial. These inconsistencies would have been useful to Haley at trial.

In 2005, ...

Bradley G. Dreher was a California parolee when he learned that he was HIV-positive. He was seeking treatment, but was arrested and incarcerated for alleged parole violations before he could begin a treatment regimen. He remained in the Solano County Jail for over three weeks and was incarcerated at the ...

A federal court in the District of Columbia (DC) refused to dismiss a former prisoner's claims that she was improperly confined 149 days past her sentence expiration date.

On December 15, 2005, Eloise Wormley was sentenced to 12 months in prison, but six months was suspended. She was transferred to a Fairview Halfway House (FHH) on May 30, 2006.

On June 2, 2006, Wormley left FHH to look for work, saying she would return at 2:30 p.m. When she did not return by 3 p.m., FHH staff informed the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) that she had "escaped." Wormley returned at 5:22 p.m. She was transferred to DC General Hospital because "She appeared intoxicated and was combative with staff."

When Wormley returned to FHH later that evening, she was denied re-entry and told to turn herself into the United States Marshal's Service (USMS) on Monday, June 5, 2006. Wormley spent the weekend in a homeless shelter.

On June 5, 2006, BOP official Randal White issued a "Notice of Escaped Federal Prisoner," falsely claiming that Wormley did not return to FHH on June 2, 2006 and her whereabouts were unknown. Wormley turned herself into the DC Central Detention Facility on June ...