Vincent Moto was walking on a Philadelphia sidewalk with his girlfriend and baby son one day in May 1985. He was 22, working as a sales representative for a company selling granola bars, taking a business course, and playing drums in a rock and roll band.
The idea that he'd be going to jail was about as likely as a plane falling from the sky, he said. But that was the day a passing woman identified him as the man who had raped her five months earlier.
Moto stopped, and waited until the police arrived, sure that the mistake could be resolved. But he was in jail by that night, having failed to make bond. He was convicted on the strength of her testimony and spent 10 and a half years in prison.
"You're dead but you're still alive," he said. The violence of prison was terrifying; the hundreds of new personalities to contend with overwhelming; the lack of control over any aspect of his life dehumanizing. Being innocent only compounded his nightmare.
"It's hard to say how I felt because it was like all of a sudden your life just makes this 180 degree change, from everything being fine to a living hell," said Moto. "I was so angry, so scared, so confused that crying wasn't an option."
Moto had requested DNA testing as early as 1987, after his mother sent him a newspaper article she had clipped. It was not until 1995 that a test was carried out on the victim's underwear. It showed that he was not her attacker.
But Moto is not eligible for any reparation for his years in prison. He was wrongfully convicted in Pennsylvania, one of 28 American states without a law entitling the exonerated to claim compensation. Two bills that would create a right to compensation have died in committee at the state legislature; a third is stalled there now. Another bill that would expunge wrongful convictions has had as little success.
In the states that do make reparations to the wrongly imprisoned, compensation varies wildly. In some, exonerated prisoners receive a fixed award for each year spent inside: $36,500 in California, $5,000 in Wisconsin, $50,000 in Alabama, $15,000 in Louisiana. A former prisoner in Tennessee can claim up to $1 million; in New Hampshire claims are capped at $20,000.
Some states, such as New Jersey, fix the amount according to lost income, others include this money as an additional payment to compensation already given. Several states offer other benefits, such as free health care, counseling, and tuition -- though in Montana, that is all the wrongfully convicted can expect to receive.
Moto and his family could use the benefits. Despite the associate's degree he earned in prison, he has only worked casually since he got out. Employers recoil when he tries to explain his conviction, he said. He has been diagnosed with acute depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and receives a disability payment.
His parents spent their retirement fund on lawyers to fight for his release. Now in their 70s, both are still working. He's managed to build a "pretty good" relationship with his son, but it's been hard to bond with an older daughter. "I can't go back in time and be there for her," he said.
James Tillman, who spent 18 years in prison for a rape he did not commit, made headlines earlier this year when the Connecticut state legislature agreed to award him $5 million. Lawmakers, who have not passed a general compensation law, said they were especially moved by his lack of bitterness.
But just a few weeks earlier, legislators in Florida rejected a $1.25 million award to Alan Crotzer, who had been exonerated after serving 24 years for rape, kidnapping and robbery.
"It's a crazy patchwork quilt," said Heather Weigand, director of new programs and services for the Life After Exoneration Program, a California-based non-profit which gave some support services to Moto before a lack of funds forced it to cut its eastern programs.
Two years after his 2002 pardon, Gary Gauger received $61,000 for the three years he spent in an Illinois jail after being wrongfully convicted of his parents' murder. A large portion of the money went towards legal bills from his first trial, but he was able to invest a small amount in an organic vegetables business he set up on his family's farm. "It was nice because when I got out of prison I had no money, no work," he said.
Gauger said that among the exonerated, he has been fortunate. "I've been lucky because [when I left prison] I had a support group, and I was able to move back into my parents' house with my sister and her husband. At least I had a place to live and somewhere to go."
Unlike their guilty fellow inmates who enter the parole system upon completion of their sentences, the exonerated are simply released back in to the world they left years before, without any support.
"As an exonerated person, you are dealing with the ordeal of re-entering society, but also the post-traumatic stress of having been wrongfully convicted," said Rebecca Brown, policy analyst for the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
She noted that during their time in prison the wrongfully convicted had lost job opportunities, professional development and "all these things that could have happened, but for." She added that many exonerees left prison with key relationships permanently scarred.
"Everybody that you talk to about this situation assumes that [innocent] people who were jailed for 20 years will get some sort of compensation," said Adele Bernhard, an associate professor at the Pace University Law School and a leading advocate of compensation for the wrongfully convicted. "You just sort of expect that, because we pay people when they get burned with a cup of hot coffee from McDonalds or get hit over the head with a police baton. How come these guys aren't getting any money?"
The explanation lies, Bernhard said, in the way that personal injury law works. "You don't get damages based on what happened to you, you get damages based on the fault of the person who hurt you. And in a lot of these situations there really is no particular person who could be blamed for what happened."
There were 771 exonerations in the United States in the 20th century, and 360 more since 2000 alone, said Rob Warden, head of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University. The spike is partly attributable to DNA testing, but heightened awareness of the possibility of wrongful convictions has also played a role, said Warden.
The Center points to several factors that cause wrongful convictions. Warden called erroneous eyewitness testimony, both in good faith and perjured, the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions. But even malicious witnesses cannot be sued by someone they sent to jail.
Investigators who brutalize suspects or mishandle evidence could be subject to a civil suit. Still, the burden of proving negligence is very high, and additional legal costs often prove daunting for the exonerated.
This is why advocates say laws offering automatic compensation are important. They argue that the wrongfully convicted all have a clear-cut moral right to receive an official acknowledgment of the wrong that was done to them, even if there was no direct blame on the part of the state.
"This is all of our responsibility because we all depend on the criminal justice system," Bernhard said.
Many of the 22 state compensation laws have been enacted in the last decade. Usually, they have followed high-profile exonerations. States without compensation laws have little in common geographically or politically.
"It's serendipity," said Bernhard. "There is no constituency in favor of this kind of legislation because people don't really think it will happen to them." The majority of the wrongfully convicted who have been exonerated are black and poor. Bernhard said their lives, free or behind bars, are simply not valued highly enough.
In 2004, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) secured a statute granting $50,000 for each year in prison, and $100,000 for each year on death row, for people wrongfully convicted of federal crimes. He points to an additional benefit of the law, hailed by advocates as a model statute. "It also encourages law enforcement to do their job properly in the first place," he said.
Still, Leahy has wondered, "How do you compensate someone who's been wrongfully convicted and spent 15, 20 years in jail for something they didn't do? How do you compensate for that?"
Across America, it seems no one can agree. But people like Vincent Moto would certainly like them to try.
