California Wrongful Incarceration Compensation Law: A History That is Still Being Written
Abstract
From current popular media and social commentary, one might imagine that the issue of wrongful incarceration and compensating the victims of it is only a 21st Century issue. Quite the contrary is true; the issue is as old as the criminal justice system itself—and in California, the history of wrongful conviction parallels the state’s history.
Judge Learned Hand remarked that our system of justice “has been always haunted by the ghost of the innocent man convicted. It is an unreal dream.” California alone has had over 200 wrongfully convicted people exonerated since 1989. Of these exonerees, less than 40% have received any type of compensation for the time they spent wrongfully imprisoned. That is because “exoneration guarantees only one thing—release from prison.”[4] While the laws in California have been steadily changing to support the people the state has wrongly convicted monetarily, the law still leaves far too many exonerees with nothing.
This article will mark through the history of wrongful convictions in California, explain California’s compensation laws and how they have been amended over time, and discuss possible remedies to strengthen the current iteration of the law. Part II of this article will give the history of wrongful convictions in California and the impact those wrongful convictions have on exonerees and society. Part III will look at California’s compensation statute and how it has been applied throughout the State’s history. Part IV will conclude with recommendations for the future.
