Pennsylvania is one of just 10 states that has no compensation program for those who are wrongfully convicted.
Of those 10, it is the most populous and has the most wrongful convictions, according to data kept by the National Registry of Exonerations.
Since 1989, 148 people have been exonerated in Pennsylvania. In total, they lost an average of 14.4 years in prison.
“Pennsylvania is an outlier and not in a good way,” said Liz DeLosa, deputy legal director of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project. “We are one of the minority that offer nothing.”
DeLosa’s work helped get the 2007 conviction of Daniel Carnevale vacated. He was imprisoned for nearly 14 years on three counts of second-degree murder in connection with a 1993 fatal fire in Bloomfield and is now suing the detectives and prosecutor he said wrongly put him away.
Although legislation has been proposed in the commonwealth, it has failed to gain traction.
That’s likely, in part, because of the potential cost, said Jeffrey Gutman, who teaches at George Washington University law school and studies exoneree compensation.
“In Pennsylvania, it could be quite a bit,” he said.
In most states, the compensation provided varies from about $50,000 to $125,000 per year of wrongful incarceration. Additional money can be added if the exoneree served time on death row.
According to the National Registry, the average payout to an exoneree covered by a state compensation program is just over $891,000.
When there is no compensation program, the only recourse for exonerees is to file federal civil rights claims. That might be more lucrative, Gutman said, but it also takes much longer.
According to the National Registry, the average payout to an exoneree in a federal civil rights suit is $3.8 million. In Pennsylvania, it’s $3.5 million.
Relevant factors to determine damages include how long a person was incarcerated, the nature of the behavior that led to the wrongful conviction, and whether the person suffered egregiously during incarceration, Gutman said.
Samuel Gross, the co-founder of the National Registry of Exonerations, said the circumstances that led to Carnevale’s conviction are not that unusual.
In the National Registry listing for his case, contributing factors that led to conviction include: mistaken witness identification, false or misleading forensic evidence, perjury or false accusation, official misconduct and inadequate legal defense.
“It’s a depressing case,” Gross said. But, he continued, “Nothing about it sounds out of line with murder exonerations and arson exonerations.”
According to the registry, since 1989, there have been 3,807 people exonerated across the country for crimes they didn’t commit. Of those, 1,472 were for murder. Twenty-five were for arson.
DeLosa noted that exonerees often need more than just compensation when they are released from prison. Some states — again, not Pennsylvania —provide reentry resources, medical insurance and access to secondary education.
Some states, she said, also have written into their compensation programs an offset if an exoneree recovers damages in a federal civil rights suit. If so, DeLosa said, they have to repay the state program.
For Carnevale, the only available option is a federal lawsuit, which is currently on hold while two of the defendants he is suing appeal at the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“You’re never going to make Daniel Carnevale whole,” DeLosa said. “But you could put him in a position where he is more comfortable.”
