Alabama Refuses Compensation to Innocent Man Who Spent 30 Years on Death Row

eji.org: Alabama Refuses Compensation to Innocent Man – One of the longest serving death row prisoners in Alabama history and among the longest serving condemned prisoners to be freed after presenting evidence of innocence, Mr. Hinton became the 152nd person exonerated from death row since 1983 when he was released on April 3, 2015.

Alabama law provides that compensation may be awarded to a wrongfully incarcerated person if the Committee on Compensation for Wrongful Incarceration finds that he meets the eligibility criteria, but applying for compensation is often a meaningless exercise because the statute requires a legislative enactment to appropriate the necessary funds. Mr. Hinton’s application was approved by the committee, and this session, State Senator Paul Bussman sponsored a bill to appropriate the funds to compensate Mr. Hinton. The bill never even made it out of committee.

At the same time, Republican lawmakers introduced the “Fair Justice Act.” As Mr. Hinton wrote in an op-ed, had the “Fair Justice Act” been in place when he was convicted, “I would have been executed despite my innocence.” Like other men and women sentenced to death in Alabama, where there is no state-funded office to provide counsel for postconviction proceedings, it took years to find volunteer lawyers willing and able to provide the legal assistance Mr. Hinton needed to prove his innocence. Mr. Hinton wrote: