Oregon's law to pay compensation to people who have been wrongfully convicted has been ineffective since it was enacted two years ago, and advocates argue the state's Department of Justice opposes compensating people who have been exonerated.
Senate Bill 1584, which passed the state House unanimously in 2022, would require Oregon to pay $65,000 a year for each year that someone was wrongfully incarcerated. The law also requires that anyone who is on parole or spends a year on the sex offender registry must receive $25,000.
Lawmakers on the state's Joint Committee on the Judiciary heard testimony from wrongfully convicted people for the second time this year, who argue the state is trying to block payments to people who were incarcerated and later released after courts vacated their convictions. According to KOPB:.
“I'm one of a small minority of people who have been through hell that most people can't even imagine,” Earl Bain, a disabled military veteran who was wrongfully convicted of sexual abuse in 2009, served six years in prison and then acquitted, told lawmakers. “It still pains me to this day.”
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Lawmakers on the state's Joint Committee on the Judiciary heard testimony from a wrongfully convicted person for the second time this year. (Getty Images)
“The Department of Justice has opposed our obtaining compensation at every stage,” Bain said, adding that he settled for a “fraction” of what the law allows because he feared he and his daughter would have faced a lengthy trial.
KOPB reported that of more than 52 wrongful conviction claims filed under the 2022 law, Bain's is one of only three that have been settled and resulted in compensation being awarded to people who were wrongfully convicted. In order to receive compensation, wrongfully convicted people must prove they did not commit a crime or had no involvement in it, and the state Department of Justice has adopted the practice of contesting most claims under the 2022 law.
The State Department said it was reviewing each case on a case-by-case basis to see whether the evidence met the requirements of the law.
“If we paid restitution in every case where a verdict was overturned on appeal, we would be paying restitution to a huge number of people … we would be paying restitution to people who are certainly guilty,” said Kimberly McCullough, legislative director for the Oregon Department of Justice.
Advocates for the exonerated argue that the state Department of Justice is re-traumatizing those wrongly convicted by going to great lengths to avoid paying compensation without seeing that a ruling has already been made in court.
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Advocates for the exonerated say the state Department of Justice is re-traumatizing those who were wrongly convicted. (Getty Images)
“We see that Justice Department lawyers are looking for loopholes in the law so that new exculpatory evidence can't be presented at trial, so we're just starting over with the original criminal records and what already happened,” said Janice Placal, executive director of the Forensic Justice Project, whose brother was released after being wrongfully accused of drug trafficking in Nicaragua.
“The Justice Department lawyers who have been working on these cases have been looking for loopholes in compensation law instead of looking at new evidence of innocence and seeing what others have seen,” Prakar added.
“If past courts have ruled not guilty in certain circumstances or there have been gubernatorial statements, perhaps that would be a policy choice the Legislature would want to make to simplify the statute, but as it stands, that's not the standard in the statute,” McCullough said.
Lawmakers on the Judiciary Committee pressed representatives of the state Department of Justice on Tuesday, proposing changes to the law that would allow future cases to be resolved more quickly.
In order to receive compensation, an exonerated person must prove that he or she is innocent of and had no involvement in the crime. (iStock)
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Advocates point out that Oregon is an exception when it comes to compensation laws.
The committee's chairman, Democratic state Sen. Floyd Prozanski, noted that some lawmakers recently visited Texas to investigate how the state has handled compensation for wrongful convictions.
“What we saw in Texas was people claiming there was a mistake,” Prozanski said.
Oregon's current attorney general, Ellen Rosenblum, a Democrat who oversees the Justice Department and its work on compensation legislation, will not run for a fourth term.
