"Texas Supreme Court defines 'actual innocence' more broadly," is the Fort Worth Star-Telegram editorial.
After decades of legal motions challenging two murder convictions, it appears that Billy Frederick Allen will receive $2 million from the state of Texas for wrongfully imprisoning him for almost 26 years.
The Texas Supreme Court on Friday issued a significant interpretation of the Tim Cole Act that allows compensation even in cases where DNA evidence is not available to nullify a conviction.
In a unanimous opinion by Justice Dale Wainwright, the court said the definition of "actual innocence" in the law includes claims like Allen's in which the trial was constitutionally flawed enough to undermine confidence in the conviction.
And:
Allen kept challenging his conviction, and a trial judge repeatedly ruled that he should receive a new trial. After the law changed for raising claims of new evidence, the Court of Criminal Appeals in 2009 threw out Allen's conviction based on the ineffective assistance of his trial lawyer in not presenting evidence pointing to someone else as the killer. Prosecutors later dropped the charges.
When Allen filed a claim with the Texas comptroller's office for compensation that's available to exonerated inmates, he was denied.
The comptroller argued that the Court of Criminal Appeals' ruling didn't amount to the declaration of "actual innocence" required by the law.
But the Supreme Court said the Legislature had made clear its intent to cover cases like Allen's.
In a detailed examination, the court said "actual innocence" encompasses both claims such as exonerations based on new evidence from DNA testing and those in which "the constitutional error at trial probably resulted in the conviction of one who was actually innocent."
"The Legislature has drawn no distinctions between the two types of 'actual innocence' claims," Wainwright wrote.
The Texas Supreme Court Ruling in In RE: Billy Frederick Allen is available in Adobe .pdf format. Here's additional news coverage of the ruling.
Jim Vertuno writes, "Texas high court orders state to pay ex-inmate $2M," for AP.
The Texas Supreme Court ordered the state Friday to pay about $2 million to an ex-inmate who spent 26 years in prison for murder before his conviction was overturned, a decision legal experts said could set a new standard for when ex-prisoners should be compensated.
Texas has paid nearly $50 million to former inmates who have been cleared. But state Comptroller Susan Combs had resisted paying Billy Frederick Allen, arguing that his conviction was overturned because he had ineffective lawyers, not because he had proven his innocence.
The state Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion written by Justice Dale Wainwright, disagreed, saying the state's criminal courts had shown Allen had a legitimate innocence claim and he should be paid.
Jeff Blackburn, chief counsel of the Innocence Project of Texas, which works to free wrongfully convicted inmates, said Friday's ruling could open the door for more compensation claims from ex-prisoners.
"The floodgates are not opening, but what this will do is give a fair shake to people who are innocent," Blackburn said. "This is a major step forward in terms of opening up and broadening the law of exoneration in general."
Texas' compensation law is the most generous in the U.S., according to the national Innocence Project. Freed inmates who are declared innocent by a judge, prosecutors or a governor's pardon can collect $80,000 for every year of imprisonment, along with an annuity.
What makes Allen's case different is that he didn't have an innocence declaration. What he had instead was a Court of Criminal Appeals ruling that reversed his conviction based on ineffective counsel and supported a lower court's finding that the evidence against him was too weak for a reasonable jury to convict him.
In effect, the Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest court in criminal matters, supported Allen's claim of "actual innocence" and he should be paid, the state Supreme Court ruled.
"Court to Texas: Pay $2 million to man imprisoned for 26 years," is the Los Angeles Times report by Molly Hennessy-Fiske.
Billy Frederick Allen, now in his 60s, was convicted of two 1983 Dallas-area murders. Unlike other inmates freed after DNA evidence proved their innocence, Allen was freed in 2009 after a court found problems with witness testimony and his trial attorneys' representation. Allen sued the state for compensation for wrongful imprisonment.
Allen's attorney said the Supreme Court ruling may prove key to developing standards for when the state must compensate former prisoners.
"There are many cases where people are struggling and they don't have DNA, but they now have hope," Allen's attorney, Kris Moore of McKinney, Texas, told The Times. "The implications of this for the Texas justice system are probably larger than people realize."
He said the ruling may make it easier for inmates such as Richard Miles of Dallas -- who served 14 years for crimes he didn't commit, then spent two years awaiting a court ruling that finally came in February -- to be compensated more quickly.
But he said it's not clear what bearing Allen's case may have on other ongoing high-profile exoneration battles. In one such case, Kerry Max Cook has written a book and attracted celebrity supporters in his fight to prove his innocence and receive compensation for serving 22 years on Texas' death row for an East Texas murder he says he never committed.
Courthouse News Service posts, "Texas Owes $2M to Man Exonerated of Murder." It's by David Lee.
The comptroller said Allen was freed because of ineffective assistance of counsel, not actual innocence.
A unanimous panel of the state Supreme Court concluded otherwise Friday, saying the habeas relief amounted to actual innocence.
Substantive claims based on newly discovered evidence, such as DNA, are not the only permissible actual innocence claims under the act, according to the 19-page decision.
Procedural claims that are "intertwined" with constitutional errors are permissible as well
"He asserted a constitutional claim for ineffective assistance of counsel, which coupled with a proper defense of his case at trial would probably have concluded in a not guilty verdict," Justice Dale Wainwright wrote for the panel.
The court based its holding on Schlup v. Delo, a 1995 ruling in which the U.S. Supreme Court defined actual innocence as "not merely require a showing that a reasonable doubt exists in the light of the new evidence, but rather that no reasonable juror would have found the defendant guilty."
Under Schlup, the standard does not address the trial court's independent judgment as to whether reasonable doubt exists. Rather the standard requires the court to make a probabilistic determination about what reasonable, properly instructed jurors would do.
In 2001, for example, the Texas Legislature changed the term "not guilty" in the statute to "actual innocence." This gives credence to the idea that lawmakers wanted to include Schlup claims of actual innocence, the judges found.
More on Schlup, via Oyez.
Relates posts are in the wrongful incarceration index.
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