Man Denied $ Compensation After Wrongful ...

[MA-Caver]

Boy, talk about getting screwed twice by the same system...

Texas man wrongly put away for 18 years denied compensation after legal glitch

A courtroom technicality has cost a wrongly convicted Texas man the compensation that would otherwise be due him for the 18 years he'd served in Texas prison--14 of which he spent on Death Row. Anthony Graves would have received $1.4 million in compensation if only the words "actual innocence" had been included in the [COLOR=#366388 ! important][COLOR=#366388 ! important]judge's [COLOR=#366388 ! important]order[/COLOR][/COLOR][/COLOR] that secured Graves's release from prison. The Comptroller's office decided the omission means Graves gets zero dollars, writes Harvey Rice at the Houston Chronicle, even though the prosecutor, judge, and defense all agreed at trial he is innocent.
So how did this happen? Cory Session, a Texas Innocence Project policy director and one of the architects of the 2009 Tim Cole compensation law for exonerated prisoners, tells The Lookout that the Brenham prosecutor's office decided to dismiss the murder charges they originally filed against Graves, instead of retrying him all over again and finding him innocent. The compensation law provides $80,000 per year in prison only to claimants explicitly found innocent in a retrial or who are granted a pardon. Neither status now applies to Graves.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelo...ecades-denied-compensation-after-legal-glitch

IMO the state of Texas should still write this man a check since they realize it was an oversight and loophole that allowed this b.s. to happen.
That is just plain stupid that just because of two words on a piece of paper denies the man his right to at least gain some measure (impossibly all) of compensation for the loss of 18 years of his life in a hell.

 

[LuckyKBoxer]

Seems to me that states are exhibiting more and more criminal like behavior then ummm actual criminals...

 

[David43515]

If the statute says they only give compensation to those found innocent or those who`ve been pardoned, have the Governor write him a pardon and give the man a big check and an appology.