Freedom, however, was frightening. Night after night, he awoke every 15 minutes or so, wrestling with the covers, wondering if he’d hallucinated it all. He kept the television on to remind himself he wasn’t in prison anymore. Its noise broke the first complete silence he’d experienced in half a lifetime, he said, which “scared the hell out of me.”
More than a month living at the hotel ate up his modest savings, Cotton said. His conviction still showed up in background searches, he said, so when he found a landlord willing to rent to him, he had to pay extra. Finding a job seemed impossible. To keep up with expenses, he took out high-interest loans.
But there was hope: Michigan offers $50,000 for each year a person is wrongfully imprisoned, thanks to the Wrongful Imprisonment Compensation Act, which took effect in 2017. For Cotton, it seemed to promise nearly a million dollars.
The conviction integrity unit in a prosecutor’s office had recommended Cotton’s release after finding that his trial was fundamentally unfair, marred by police misconduct that resulted in key evidence being withheld. His case represented a clear injustice, Cotton believed, and he quickly filed a claim in civil court, the first step in the WICA process.
I always wondered if there was some penalty to both the prosecutor and state that couldn’t be ignored (like prison time as a percent of the years wrongfully imprisoned, and a fixed massive amount of money that comes from the relevant state or federal level in the range of half a billion based on time served) if that wouldn’t cut down on these wrongful convictions.
Of anyone who should be set for life for damages incurred, it’s these people.
While there are various different kinds of compensation the government may have to pay, there is no universal compensation, not everywhere does so. As for the prosecutor, they have immunity from damn near anything they do in their capacity as prosecutor.
I really think we need a different immunity standard - i.e. a civil level of burden of proof that misconduct occurred gets you fired at the least. Preferably potential criminal liability yourself similar to medical malpractice things. I.e. if you honestly believed you were doing your job and things go south, sucks but no punishment. If you’re drunk or negligent you get large fines and fired I would hope. If you’re intentionally killing people like the “Angel of Mercy” trope, you go to jail.
Here it’s like if you were doing your job and the police faked things, or people lied, or just the evidence was ambiguous and you got it wrong, for the prosecutor it’s maybe a learning experience. If you just are not paying attention to the cases you bring and / or let bias get in the way and are wrong maybe you get fined and or fired. If you’re actively breaking rules (the law?) withholding evidence that the defense should get, or other stuff like that, you should get brought up on charges.
Less than a million for almost 20 years of his life, that is super low compensation.
Canada handles wrong convictions far differently than America does. David Milgaard, who’d been in prison for 23 years, was awarded $10 million in the 90’s.
Here’s a list of all the cases so far in Canada.
