SOME OF MY BILLS HELPED THOSE WRONGFULLY CONVICTED
It’s uncomfortable to confront imperfections of the justice system, and I’m proud of what we’ve done to right some of the wrongs of the past.
Imagine you have spent the last decade in a state prison for a crime you didn’t commit. There are so many legal hurdles you would have to overcome to prove your innocence, not to mention a multitude of people who believe you are guilty. Now imagine, after years of struggling against the system, you finally are exonerated and set free. Where do you go? What do you do?
Although this scenario is a rare one, it does happen because of our imperfect legal system. There have been 3,315 documented cases of wrongful convictions in the United States, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.
The cases total over 29,100 years lost unjustly to prison.
I first met the good people at the California Innocence Project — a legal program based in San Diego — when they reached out to me in 2016. At the time, I was serving in the California state Senate. That’s when they shared with me the story of Kim Long.
Kim was wrongfully convicted of seconddegree murder in Riverside County and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison in 2005. More than a decade after her original sentencing, Kim had new forensic pathology and DNA evidence proving her innocence. Although this new evidence led to the release of Kim in 2016 on bail, it wasn’t until a California Supreme Court decision in 2020 that the court once and for all tossed out Kim’s murder conviction.
Prior to her wrongful conviction, she was working as a nurse. When the California Innocence Project reached out to my office in 2016, my team and I worked to get Kim a hearing with the California Board of Registered Nursing in hopes of getting her license reinstated. She is still trying to get her license back.
Working with the California Innocence Project opened my eyes to the hardships that exonerated people face, both while serving in the prison system and once exonerated and set free. Together with the help of the California Innocence Project, I introduced two bills that were later signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown to make things better.
Senate Bill 1134 was signed in 2016, to make it easier for wrongfully convicted people in California to use new evidence — such as DNA evidence — to prove their innocence. Previously, it was difficult for wrongfully convicted people to meet the standard of proof, which stated that evidence needed to “point unerringly to innocence.” Under this new law, people imprisoned for crimes they did not commit only need to prove that
the new evidence would have more than likely led to an acquittal of the crime had it been available at the original trial.
Senate Bill 335 was signed into law in 2017. It expanded the eligibility of wrongfully convicted people to receive transitional services after their release from prison. These services include housing assistance, job training, mental health services and more. In 2015, an earlier law had expanded the transitional services that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation must provide to inmates who are leaving the prison system to include exonerated people. However, that law was written so narrowly that exonerated people could not truly benefit from it, using the “points unerringly to innocence” language that Senate Bill 1134 had corrected. Senate Bill 336 amended this language to make re-entry services available to a wider group of those who are exonerated.
These bills received unanimous support in both the Senate and Assembly.
It’s uncomfortable to confront the imperfections of the justice system, and I’m proud of the bipartisan work we’ve done to right some of the wrongs of the past. It’s unfair that exonerated people put their trust in the system to prove their innocence, only for it to fail them. And, importantly, if the wrong person is serving time, the real perpetrator is out there harming our community.
That’s why policymakers need to make sure that we are working with partner organizations such as the California Innocence Project to identify opportunities where the system can be improved.
Since my time in the state Legislature, additional bills have been signed into law that further help exonerated people. I cherish the work that we accomplished together in the Senate, and I am glad that some of my bills paved the way for future legislation to help those who were wrongfully convicted. I hope that in the future I will have the opportunity to contribute more towards making the justice system work for all Californians.
Anderson represents District 2 on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors and was awarded “Legislator of the Year” by the California Innocence Project in 2017 when he was a state senator. He lives in Alpine.