Fund to help people who are wrongly convicted of crimes in Louisiana could be abolished

New Orleans (WVUE) – It is a fate that most people could never imagine: locked up for decades because of a crime that they have not committed.

Now some state legislators – supported by Louisiana's Attorney General – want to abolish a fund that helps the life of free relief prisoners.

Reginald Adams remembers his first moments of freedom.

“On the day I had the opportunity to actually hug my mother without being behind closed doors,” recalled Adams.

Thirty -four years had been taken away from them.

Adams says: “You can only imagine what I went through. And I don't want to share my stress with you. So I take it with me, conjure up a little smile on my face to hide the way I really feel and get involved in my business.

“You are lucky that you get out.”

In 1980 Adams was guilty he says he saw things that he could not repeat.

“We have a small rule for it. It's almost like Las Vegas.” What Angola is going on, “stays in there,” said Adams.

Adams was released in 2014 after the Innocence project New Orleans had presented evidence of the then lawyer of the community in the community, Leon Cannizzaro. The lawyers of Innocence projects found a NOPD report in the DA DA, in which it was shown in detail how the officials had actually arrested someone else because of the crime and connected the murder weapon to this person. Nevertheless, Adams was prosecuted and convicted by the former Da Harry Connick office.

Fast lead 34 years. When Cannizzaro was presented with the results, she agreed to clear Adam's conviction and said that he had been wrongly imprisoned for more than three decades.

“It is clear to me that Adams did not receive a fair procedure. And if his lawyers had been in possession of this information three decades ago … he would have been acquitted,” said Cannizzaro at the time.

Adams went out of prison at the age of 61 and only had the clothes on his back. Louisiana's law says because he was wrongly brought to prison for a crime he had not committed. For 10 years he is entitled to money from the state's blurring compensation fund – $ 40,000 a year.

“I have no high hopes, big, high hopes,” said Adams. “How, like just small things. I'm not trying to buy a house, I'm not trying to live in Beverly Hills, I'm not trying to do nothing about it.”

He received some of his payments from the fund, but is still owed to four more.

But now a legislative template, which was written by the state MP Nicholas Muscarello Jr. (R-Hammond), is trying to cancel the law that has set the remuneration fund.

At the criminal judicial committee of state legislation last week, Attorney General Liz Murrill supported the efforts.

“The financial responsibility for this conviction should be among the parties or the municipality, in which the chosen civil servants or the specific civil servants – if it is the police or the there or the sheriff.

Instead of getting money from the state's blurring compensation fund, Murrill believes that exonere should instead look for money from their local communities.

“I think this should reconcile the financial responsibility with the parish officers who make the decisions that create the underlying behavior that is complained about,” said Murrill.

Murrill said she was that Exonerees should receive her money by submitting complaints in accordance with Section 1983 to receive a federal law on the violation of civil rights, in the hope of receiving damages for illegal convictions.

Jee Park, Executive Director of Innocence Project New Orleans, says that this process is expensive for taxpayers and the exonere, and not everyone who has been relieved would be entitled to submit legally.

“It is so difficult. You ask you to submit a civil rights lawsuit from 1983,” said Park. “The only claims that are justified are claims against a local official who acted who created misconduct … and their misconduct cost the illegal conviction.

“Let us assume that a local civil servant like a prosecutor had relieving evidence, and in the course of a survey the policeman has applied excessive violence.

But Park says, even if Exonerees had been proven to be innocent due to DNA evidence, they would not have been considered for money after section in 1983.

“If you are relieved by DNA evidence, it would not qualify,” she said. “If they are relieved because their lawyer was ineffective, they would not qualify.”

According to Park, a very small part of Exonerees has ever successfully used the federal law.

“These are incredibly difficult cases to win,” she said. “According to the national register of relief in the state of Louisiana and only seven in successful complaints (since 1989), only seven were relieved in the state of Louisiana.”

Even if you get a judgment in your favor, Park said that the exonere may not see any compensation.

“It is incredibly difficult to collect these civilian judgments,” said Park.

According to the Park, the current system Exonerees already presents a tough struggle that tries to be paid for from the state's vault compensation fund. Before he became a governor, Murrill's predecessor Jeff Landry submitted oppositions as a attorney in general in almost 85 percent of the compensation claims of the occupants.

Jarvis Ballard falls into this number. He has been trying to maintain his compensation for years.

Ballard locked it up for 32 years and said he missed it: “Everything. No sport, no sport, I did not watch my family, no transition from children to young adults, none of it. I was 18 years old, I missed everything. No business, no ability to work.”

Ballard said he was convicted of rape that he had not committed.

“I am 18 years old,” he recalled. “I have never been arrested because I have no tightened rape or anything.

Instead of completing the high school, Ballard landed in Angola and did hard work.

“You get 4 cents an hour,” he said. “Two centers go into their savings, two cents go into their (commissioner) account. So did you do something 80 cents at the end of the week?”

As soon as the innocence project New Orleans took up its case in 2017, the lawyers found that Ballard had not committed rape. DNA evidence not only clarified him, but it was found that the prosecutors had held evidence back during his process.

He was wrongly convicted of the state of the state of the state for humans. Although Ballard was granted the money, the state still fought against its claim and appealed to the Supreme Court of Louisiana.

The AG's office said that the details of a case would not be discussed publicly.

With Ballard's case in legal disputes, he is not sure whether he will ever see a dollar from the state remuneration fund, especially now that some legislators want to eliminate it.

“If we cancel this statute, we would be the nation's first state to do this,” said Meredith Angelson, deputy IPNO director.

Murrill said: “The statute itself was really designed for people who can prove that they are factually innocent and not just had a conviction due to a legal error.”

But Ballard was released by DNA evidence. Lawyers of Innocence projects say that he had enclosed a lawsuit at the St. Bernard Parish in which he was convicted of a sum of money that has been given behind grids compared to the decades. Therefore, he counts on money from the state remuneration fund.

Park says that the abolition of the remuneration fund would not save state money. According to the fiscal note associated with Muscarlless, in the last financial year in the last financial year. This is the highest annual amount that it has ever distributed.

Park said that he force exonerees to go to their local communities, cost the state more money.

“Legal dispute costs alone,” she said. “I mean, we speak 40,000 US dollars a year for these people. The legal disputes of civil rights measures from 1983 are enormous. Therefore, it would cost the state a lot more money together.”

The Murrill office said in a statement: “The taxpayers in North Louisiana should not have to do so for the illegal convictions of a chosen local official in South -Louisiana or vice versa. This current system has incorrectly geared and set the responsibility for the behavior of a single chosen officer in the entire state.”

Adams says that the money he receives from the state is perhaps not much, but “it is something that my life begins again. … thirty, 40 years ago, who knows what I could have been? I see what I mean? I have never given an opportunity because it was taken away.”

Muscarello told Fox 8 in a statement that his bill was “changed significantly”.

“I work with the stakeholders to obtain a law that gives fairness to those who were wrongly convicted and at the same time protects the interests of the state,” he said.

A Murrill spokesman said someone like Adams would continue to receive money from the state, even if the remuneration fund is abolished. It remains to be seen what would happen to Ballard because he has not yet received compensation.

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