By Charles David Henry
Journalism Guild Writer
It has cost California taxpayers more than $220 million to overturn 600 wrongful convictions over two decades, a university study reports.
Individuals who had their conviction overturned were paid $80 million, the study found. Settlements for wrongful conviction cases cost $68 million, “and an additional $68 million was spent on trials and appeals,” the Los Angeles Times reported March 10.
“The effort to put a price on prosecutorial misconduct, errant judicial rulings and forensic lab mistakes was undertaken by the Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the Quattrron Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania,” the newspaper reported.
The study reviewed 692 cases from 1989 to 2012 and adjusted the cost to 2013 dollar values.
“The study examined cases in which felony convictions were reversed, and the defendants were either released or acquitted on retrial. Whether the defendant was guilty or innocent … was ‘unknowable,’” the Times reported.
The 2000 Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division scandal resulted in 85 felony cases being overturned. Prosecutors sought to dismiss these cases because the credibility of the officers involved in these incidents was questionable. The city paid out $78 million in settlements, the newspaper noted.
“Most errors were in cases involving violent crimes, and one out of five overturned convictions had resulted in a life sentence. It took an average of eight years for the 92 overturned cases involving murder to be reversed. While judicial mistakes at trial, including improper instructions to juries or ruling on evidence, were the most common causes for reversal, cited in 164 cases, prosecutorial misconduct was found in 86 of the cases,” the Times reported.
More than 200,000 defendants are convicted each year in California. “We reject the proposition that an acceptable rate of error can apply to proceedings that impact people’s lives in the way that criminal prosecutions can,” the researchers argue.
