Despite the wonderful clarity of DNA evidence, which has exonerated more than 80 Americans of crimes for which they have been imprisoned, two-thirds have never been given any compensation for their lost years. In a country in which some slip-and-fall claims win millions of dollars, it is startling to realize that decades wrongly spent in maximum-security prisons are typically worth nothing.

"In America, when someone is wronged, we pay them," says Adele Bernhard, a Pace University law professor. "It may not be a perfect system, but that's what we do. Why don't we do that here?"

In 36 states, according to Bernhard, no laws explicitly provide for compensating the wrongly imprisoned, while other laws protect police and prosecutors from lawsuits. The reasoning is that public servants could not do their job if they constantly had to fear being sued.

As long as officials do not jail the wrong person intentionally (and they almost never do), they are not to blame - and in our justice system, someone has to be blamed before anyone pays. Even in the 14 states that do have laws to compensate victims of courtroom mistakes, the caps on awards are often miserly. For those out of federal prisons, damages cannot exceed a laughable $5,000.

AI (Afro Interpretation)

Injustice in America is on the rise. From bogus lawsuits to corrupt lawyers and judges with twisted moral values. DNA evidence, the newest scientific discovery for identification, has been a blessing and a curse to the legal system.

A blessing because if the accused DNA matches the crime, they can be justly convicted, however, where it pertains to matching the DNA to the innocently imprisoned and accused, it turns to a curse. Using this discovery to enforce justice is easy to do but using it to correct the many legal mistakes is something the proud men of the United States justice system cannot bare to do.

Source from Time Almanac 2002

© 2003 by AfroStaff