State Must Compensate Wrongly Imprisoned

A line item appearing in the governor's proposed budget for the next two years is a payment of $500,000 to a man named James Calvin Tillman. The East Hartford resident is not being paid for providing any services to the state - his payment is an act of restitution by Rell for the 18 years Tillman served in state prison.

Tillman was convicted of rape in 1989 while living in a homeless shelter. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison. With the help of The Innocence Project, a non-profit legal advocacy group whose goal is to secure exonerations of wrongly convicted persons through DNA testing, Tillman was able to prove that he was not the man responsible for the rape he was found guilty of committing. The sole piece of evidence against him was the erroneous identification by the victim.

The governor's proposal amounts to only $27,000 per year Tillman was incarcerated. Tillman thinks that while this money would be helpful, it is nowhere near the appropriate amount to cover the immense wrong that the state was responsible for. Thus, he is requesting $5 million in compensation. While the money was offered with no strings attached, and Tillman can accept it and continue to pursue additional monetary damages, it would be wrong to make him engage in a legal battle which may take a few years to come to the inevitable conclusion that the state is liable.

The governor and the legislature need to look hard at this situation, and in the end, they need to accept the fact that $5 million is not a lot of money in the scheme of the state's $35.8 billion budget for 2008 and 2009. The Judiciary Committee has already taken the critical step of drafting a bill that would do just this. It should be supported unequivocally by all members of the General Assembly, and the Governor's office should release a statement supporting it.

Not only is this legislation appropriate, it is fiscally intelligent. History shows that this $5 million figure is not an act of greed or extortion. Louisville, KY just agreed to pay a man $3.9 million for seven years in prison. One town in Michigan has agreed to pay a man $1.8 million, plus a stipend of $6,400 a month for nine years in prison. Tillman could take his case to a jury and potentially win more. But, Tillman deserves his money now, and the state should put closure to this embarrassing situation once and for all by handing him a $5 million check.