An Empirical Reexamination of State Statutory Compensation for the Wrongly Convicted

In Part II, I discuss the cases of Kirk Odom and Santae Tribble brought under the D.C. Act. Those recent cases offer insight into how two different judges approached the difficult remedial questions presented. They also demonstrate how dramatically most statutes undercompensate claimants. In Part III, I describe how I drew data provided by the National Registry of Exonerations, and many other sources, to document which exonerees filed state compensation claims and how those claims were decided.

The resulting data show the percentages of exonerees who filed claims and were awarded compensation and the costs of such awards. In Part IV, I analyze aspects of existing state compensation statutes. In Part V, I explore the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. In Part VI, I extract design elements of those statutes and draw lessons from the empirical research to propose statutory reforms that are both mindful of state interests and more just for exonerees.