A Moral Debt As Yet Unpaid

Here's an op-ed piece from Louisiana that, with a few name changes, applies just as well to the situation here in Florida. Innocent people who've spent years incarcerated for crimes they did not commit are not getting compensated. And the "lucky" ones, the ones who do receive some compensation amount, usually do so only after spending years fighting for it.

In Florida, where Alan Crotzer will be trying for the third time to get our legislature to compensate him for the 24 years, 6 months and 13 days that he spent behind bars for a crime someone else committed, one wonders where is the moral compass guiding our lawmakers? Are they so afraid of appearing soft on crime that they avoid doing the right thing for those found innocent of crimes, as if the association with crime itself is too close?

If our representatives and senators were truly concerned about crime, they would be outraged at the injustices perpetrated when innocents are locked up and, coincidentally, the guilty are left free to commit more crimes. Freeing (and compensating) the innocent is not being soft on crime. It is instead being wedded to the truth, the simple truth that innocent people do not belong behind bars, period. It is what we do when we discover those instances where mistakes were made, and how we treat the victims of those mistakes, that add to our measure as a civilized society.

The Shreveport Times, January 27, 2008 -- "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.—" The Rev. Theodore Parker, 19th century minister and abolitionist

There are those who deserve to be in prison and sometimes there are those who just don't belong there. I am always particularly moved when innocent men are released from prison. I am, however, always saddened that they spent one day behind bars. It's refreshing on one hand that eventually the system allows exoneration, but depressing on the other hand that the system sometimes incarcerates the innocent.

Rickey Johnson spent nearly 26 years in one of America's bloodiest and notorious prisons for a rape he knew he didn't commit. Of course, no one beyond his closest friends and relatives believed him because everyone locked up says they didn't do it. Not Rickey Johnson. He spent almost three decades in a place where he didn't belong paying a debt to society he didn't owe. Thanks to DNA evidence he has been released. He is now a free man.

How does this continue to happen? No one is dare suggesting the criminal justice system come to a grinding halt or that a moratorium be placed on all harsh sentences. But, the process of justice must be reviewed to include all avenues of proving innocence. Of course, the legal standard is "innocent until proven guilty," but once a defendant is in a courtroom, the opposite is usually true.

A young man with potential was wrongly identified and sentenced to spend the rest of his life as a number. While he stresses he isn't bitter it would be understandable. If he truly isn't bitter he's a better man than most. At some point his cause certainly seemed hopeless and perhaps he had resigned himself to live out his existence on "The Farm." To call what happened to Rickey Johnson and others like him across America a "miscarriage of justice" is an understatement. It is good to know that groups like the Innocence Project are fighting to show there are flaws in the system.

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