Imagine you\u2019re 18 years old and convicted of a murder you didn\u2019t commit. The jury found you guilty on shaky evidence and recommended life imprisonment, but the judge decided the crime was heinous and deserved the death penalty.<\/p>\n
Your appeals went nowhere, so you sat in prison for nearly 37 years until DNA evidence proved your innocence. The state let you out of prison, and you filed for the compensation Florida law provides in these situations \u2014 $50,000 for each year of incarceration, or $1.85 million total.<\/p>\n
That seems fair, but a wacky law stands in the way. You are ineligible for compensation because of prior convictions unrelated to the murder case.<\/p>\n
Seems dumb, right?\u00a0Robert Earl DuBoise\u00a0would agree with you because he lived that nightmare and now finds his just compensation tangled up in red legalese.<\/p>\n
Right now, though, that\u2019s the law in Florida, and it needs to change. Sen.\u00a0Jeff Brandes, a St. Petersburg Republican, and Rep.\u00a0Traci Koster, a Tampa Democrat, are trying to do just that.<\/p>\n
They have filed bills in their respective chambers to right the ship.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf anyone thinks justice was served by simply releasing him\u00a0without compensating him, that\u2019s not justice,\u201d Brandes told reporter\u00a0JeffreySchweers\u00a0of the USA Today-Florida network. \u201cJust letting him out is not justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, all they have to do is get their respective legislative bodies to correct an obvious flaw in the system. That\u2019s the tricky part.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers tried to fix this problem in 2020, and their efforts unanimously cleared committees but never got a floor vote. In the 2021 Legislative Session, the bills didn\u2019t even get out of committee.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s past time for Gov.\u00a0Ron DeSantis\u00a0to step up on his bully pulpit and set things straight. This should not be a heavy lift for lawmakers. In the big picture, we\u2019re not talking about a budget-buster, and the Governor\u2019s endorsement should provide enough oomph to push this across the finish line.<\/p>\n
DeSantis is a Juris Doctor cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School. He was a JAG officer in the U.S. Navy. If anyone should understand what passes for justice, it\u2019s DeSantis.<\/p>\n
Tallahassee often works in mysterious ways when it comes to the Session, though. Lobbyists, constituents, their party\u2019s leadership, and, of course, the media, bombard lawmakers every day. I imagine most senators and representatives wouldn\u2019t have a problem making this change. Still, they get busy with other stuff, and help for people like Robert Earl DuBoise gets trampled by higher-priority items.<\/p>\n
The solution is to make this a high-priority item.<\/p>\n
DeSantis and leaders in the House and Senate could push this to the forefront, bring it to a vote, and get it done.<\/p>\n
It needs to happen.<\/p>\n
Joe Henderson has had a 45-year career in newspapers, including nearly 42 years at The Tampa Tribune.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wrongful Deaths Conviction Compensation Law must change Imagine you\u2019re 18 years old and convicted of a murder you didn\u2019t commit. The jury found you guilty on shaky evidence and recommended life imprisonment, but the judge decided the crime was heinous and deserved the death penalty. Your appeals went nowhere, so you sat in prison for Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14180,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[40,5,58,6,1],"tags":[1186],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14177"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14177"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14179,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14177\/revisions\/14179"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}