DeWine now opposes budget-bill provision
An expansion of Ohio’s settlement program for wrongfully incarcerated prisoners has hit a snag with strong new opposition from Attorney General Mike DeWine.
He sent letters this week to House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger, R-Clarksville, and Senate President Larry Obhof, R-Medina, asking them to remove the wrongful-incarceration provision from the state budget, which was scheduled for a vote Wednesday.
DeWine said he is concerned because the provision allows financial settlements for ex-inmates who were released because of procedural errors, not just innocence.
“A child rapist, who committed the crime, but had his conviction overturned on appeal due to a procedural error, would be awarded over $50,000 per year of prison time, plus attorney fees and lost wages,” DeWine wrote.
DeWine said he also thinks it’s inappropriate for the state to have to spend taxpayer money on a conviction overturned because a defendant’s private attorney provided ineffective assistance.
Ohio would have the most-lenient wrongfulsettlement law in the U.S. if the measure passes, DeWine said. “If this provision remains in the budget, Ohio will be the only state in the union that allows for compensation for ANY error in procedure,” he wrote to legislators.
The provision was added at the urging of state Rep. Bill Seitz, R-Cincinnati. He said it would fix what he said are errors where the Ohio Supreme Court has “gone off the rails” by improperly narrowing a 2003 law that was sponsored by Seitz and then-state Rep. Barbara Sykes, D-Akron. The existing law provides financial compensation to former inmates released because they were found innocent or because of serious mistakes in their cases.
The provision is supported by the Ohio Innocence Project at the University of Cincinnati and the Ohio public defender, but it is opposed by the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association as well as DeWine.
The change would not retroactively cover previous cases, but it could be applied if they are resubmitted for review under the new law.
Mark Godsey of the Innocence Project said the court improperly denied compensation to several of his clients who had been freed from prison, including David Ayers, a Cleveland man cleared of murder charges in 2011 after serving 11 years in prison.
The law allows compensation of $52,625 per inmate for each year of wrongful incarceration, plus attorneys’ fees, court fees and other expenses.
The proposal also would apply wrongful-imprisonment compensation findings to misdemeanor cases and allow courts to deduct debts from an ex-prisoner’s payout.