Compensating people who are wrongfully convicted is a hard sell in some states

News

Compensating people who are wrongfully convicted is a hard sell in some states

2025-03-18 05:49 Last Updated At：05:52

ATLANTA (AP) — Earlier this year, Michael Woolfolk attended a legislative committee in Georgia where lawmakers considered for a third year whether to compensate the 45-year-old for the 19 years he spent behind bars for a 2002 killing before charges against him were dismissed.

Behind him sat Daryl Lee Clark, also 45, who spent 25 years in prison for a 1998 murder conviction that was vacated over a series of legal and police errors. It was his second attempt to obtain compensation.

Georgia is one of 12 states with no law compensating people found to have been wrongfully convicted. Individuals seeking compensation take their cases to the legislature, where they seek a lawmaker to sponsor a resolution to pay them. Critics say it mires the process in politics.

Lawmakers have been considering legislation to move the decision to judges, but now it's unclear if that will pass this year.

“We need to take care simply of people who have lost so many years of their lives and their ability to make money, have a job, have a family, create stability,” Republican Rep. Katie Dempsey, a sponsor of the Georgia bill, told The Associated Press. “Many are at the age where they would be looking at their savings, and instead, there’s none.”

Missouri lawmakers have sent the governor a bill updating the state's compensation law, and legislatures in Florida and Oregon also are considering updates of their laws. Montana is considering an update of its expired program and Pennsylvania is among those, like Georgia, looking to create one.

Of the 1,739 people who have filed wrongful compensation claims under state laws since 1989, 1,328 received compensation, according to data from George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Gutman.

That doesn't include cases in states like Georgia, which has no law outlining a process.

Since 1995, 12 Georgians have received compensation and at least 11 more have sought it, according to the Georgia Innocence Project. Even some people with strong cases were turned down because they failed to convince lawmakers they were innocent, advocates say.

The latest version of Georgia's proposal would require individuals to prove their innocence to an administrative law judge. They could receive $75,000 for each year of incarceration and reimbursement for other costs such as fines and fees. There would be an additional $25,000 for each year of incarceration awaiting a death sentence.

“The way that the state has treated these individuals by taking away their freedom and liberty and effectively ruining their lives, by wrongfully convicting them and then failing to expeditiously compensate them and help them get back on their feet, doesn’t sit well with me,” said Democratic Rep. Scott Holcomb, a bill sponsor and former prosecutor.

Whether a person was released based on a finding they were not guilty or based on trial or law enforcement error is often a sticking point. Advocates say those wrongfully convicted deserve compensation either way because they are innocent until proven guilty, but some lawmakers are hesitant to pay them.

Senate Majority Whip Randy Robertson, a former sheriff’s deputy, was the lead opponent last year of individual requests for compensation and an effort to pass a compensation law. He takes issue with the term “exonerated,” which he says is too often used in cases where convictions are overturned based on trial errors.

Robertson this year introduced a different compensation bill with stricter rules that didn't get a hearing.

Florida is the only state that prevents exonerees with previous felony convictions from qualifying for compensation, according to an analysis by the advocacy group The Innocence Project.

Florida Republican state Sen. Jennifer Bradley wants to change that. For the third year she is sponsoring a bill to end the rule, arguing that an unrelated charge should not prevent people who were wronged by the state from being compensated for their “lost liberty.”

A bill in the Oregon Legislature would update a law passed in 2022 that provides exonerees $65,000 for each year they were wrongfully imprisoned, on the condition they file a successful petition proving their innocence. The new bill comes amid criticism that few exonerees have received compensation since the law took effect.

Missouri's legislature recently passed and sent to the governor a measure expanding a restitution program for people wrongly convicted of felonies. The legislation would raise compensation from $100 to $179 per day of imprisonment and remove a requirement that innocence is proven by DNA analysis.

Many Georgia lawmakers have said they don’t want to play judge and hope the state process changes.

If the legislature doesn’t pass a bill before adjourning April 4, Woolfolk and Clark may not be compensated this year. The House overwhelmingly approved five requests that could fail in the Senate.

Starting a career at 45 is hard, Woolfolk said, and he missed his children’s upbringing. He said he is sick of trying to convince lawmakers to help him.

Clark, who does not have children, got a standing ovation from House lawmakers last year who voted to compensate him.

This year, his “hope and prayers" are that he also gains some help.

Associated Press reporters Kate Payne in Tallahassee, Florida, Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, and David A. Lieb in Jefferson City, Missouri, contributed to this report.

Kramon and Payne are corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Kirsty Coventry elected IOC president and is first woman, first African to lead global Olympic body

2025-03-21 01:03 Last Updated At：01:10

COSTA NAVARINO, Greece (AP) — Kirsty Coventry was elected president of the International Olympic Committee on Thursday and became the first woman and first African to get perhaps the biggest job in world sports.

“It is a signal that we are truly global,” the Zimbabwe sports minister and two-time Olympic swimming gold medalist said.

Hers was a stunning first-round win in the seven-candidate contest after voting by 97 IOC members.

She gets an eight-year mandate into 2033 aged just 41 — youthful by the historical standards of the IOC.

It was the most open and hard-to-call IOC presidential election in decades with Coventry expected to lead the first round short of an absolute majority. Though several rounds of votes were widely predicted, she got the exact majority of 49 needed.

Coventry’s win also was a victory for outgoing IOC president Thomas Bach, who has long been seen as promoting her as his successor. He did not use his right to vote.

“I will make all of you very, very proud and hopefully extremely confident in the decision you have taken,” Coventry said in her acceptance speech. “Now we have got some work together.”

Walking to the podium, she was congratulated and kissed on both cheeks by Juan Antonio Samaranch, her expected closest rival who got 28 votes.

Also in the race were four presidents of sports governing bodies: Track and field's Sebastian Coe, skiing's Johan Eliasch, cycling’s David Lappartient, and gymnastics' Morinari Watanabe. Also contending was Prince Feisal al Hussein of Jordan.

Coventry will formally replace her mentor Bach on June 23 — officially Olympic Day — as the 10th IOC president in its 131-year history. Bach reached the maximum 12 years in office.

Key challenges for the 41-year-old Auburn University graduate will be steering the Olympic movement through political and sporting issues toward the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles, including engaging in diplomacy with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Coventry’s IOC will also need to find a host for the 2036 Summer Games which could go to India or the Middle East.

The strongest candidates in a five-month campaign with tightly controlled rules drafted by the Bach-led IOC seemed to be Coventry — who gave birth to her second child — IOC vice president Samaranch and Coe.

Coventry's manifesto offered mostly continuity from Bach with little new detail, while her rivals had specifics to benefit Olympic athletes, which she was as recently as 2016 in Rio de Janeiro.

Coe's World Athletics broke an Olympic taboo by paying $50,000 to track and field gold medalists in Paris last year. Samaranch promised to relax strict IOC commercial rules and give athletes control of footage of their Olympic performances.

Samaranch tried to follow his father, also Juan Antonio Samaranch, who was the IOC’s seventh president from 1980 to 2001.

Coe aimed to add to a remarkable career of Olympic triumphs: A two-time Olympic gold medalist in the 1,500 meters, he led a bidding team for the 2012 London Olympics, then worked for the next seven years to head the organizing team of those widely praised Games. He got just eight votes.

It has been a stellar week for Bach, who greeted Coventry and shared warm smiles after her acceptance speech.

Bach was feted on Wednesday in an emotional start to the IOC annual meeting, getting lavish praise and the title of honorary president for life. He repeated his wish to offer advice to the next president.

His hands-on executive-style presidency will deliver over a financially secure IOC, on track to earn more than $8 billion in revenue through the 2028 LA Olympics, and with a slate of future hosts through 2034: in Italy, the United States, France, Australia and finally the U.S. again, when the Winter Games return to Salt Lake City.

A signature Bach policy also has been gender parity, with equal quotas of men and women athletes at the 2024 Paris Olympics and giving a better balance of female members of the IOC and the executive board he chairs, which now has seven women among its 15 members, including Coventry.

Her win on Thursday will only add to Bach's legacy for promoting women.

Coventry won back-to-back titles in 200-meters backstroke at the 2004 Athens Olympics and Beijing four years later. She joined the IOC in 2013, almost one year after a disputed athlete election at the London Olympics. Her place among the four athletes elected was eventually awarded after Court of Arbitration for Sport rulings against two opponents.

The next president can oversee the IOC making a statement choice for its host for the 2036 Summer Games.

“There is one and one only,” Samaranch said on Wednesday when asked about challenges ahead. “We must concentrate (on) successful and relevant Olympic Games. The rest comes with success in the Games.”

The voters in the exclusive invited club of IOC members include royal family members, former lawmakers and diplomats, business leaders, sports officials and Olympic athletes. Even an Oscar-winning actress, Michelle Yeoh.

Members voted without hearing further presentations from the candidates in an election that swung on a discreet network of friendships and alliances largely forged out of sight.

AP Olympics at https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games