One of the cruelest things a government body can do to a person is lock them up for years and even decades for a crime they did not commit . And for the victims of these egregious miscarriages of justice, the second cruelest thing officials can do is deny them compensation for the life that was stolen from them.
In Louisiana , where exonorees have already complained that they have been consistently denied the compensation allowed by state law, Republicans with a state House committee have “advanced a controversial measure that would eliminate the state statute allowing financial compensation for individuals who were wrongfully convicted and later exonerated,” according to WAFB 9 .
Now, the argument House legislators in the state have made in defense of this bill is that taxpayers in one jurisdiction shouldn’t have to foot the bill to financially compensate exonerees from a different district. And maybe that would be fine if they were replacing the current law with one that would ensure those exonerated were rightfully compensated in the districts where they were thrown in prison unjustly. Instead, Louisiana lawmakers didn’t offer any legal alternatives. They just argued exonerees had other options, but those options apparently only exacerbate the existing hurdles the wrongly convicted are already going through to get what they are owed…