Fair Payback For Wrongly Convicted–Kudos To Sen. Bell
Sen. Greg Bell is asing for comment on SB16, a bill he has proposed that will provide monetary compensation for innocents who were wrongly convicted but later proven to be innocent (not the jokers who get out on a technicality).
This seems like a good idea. My only concern is that the law would only compensate victims at a rate equal to the average yearly wage in Utah for each year the innocent was confined up to 15 years. It seems to me that when we’ve screwed up this badly that we owe these people a lot more than that.
It is too bad we can’t take the money needed to pay for this out of the salary or pension of the prosecutors who wrongly put these people in jail.
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I would support Sen Bell. He is not the run of the mill loser state legislator type we have up on the hill.
Comment by WP — January 18, 2008 @ 2:30 pm
Here’s an interesting article about this same kind of bill in Florida: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-01-18-florida_N.htm
Comment by Daniel — January 18, 2008 @ 11:39 pm