Freed, and abandoned

Published 10:43 pm Wednesday, September 12, 2007

ST. LOUIS — When Antonio Beaver was freed from prison by DNA evidence, he was overwhelmed by supporters eager to help him return to normal life after spending nearly 11 years behind bars.

After his release in March, some promised jobs. Others set up a charitable fund in his name. Relatives offered assistance, too. But six months later, Beaver was quick to list the number of people he could still count on: One.

“You got to fend for yourself,” said Beaver, who was wrongly imprisoned in 1997 for a violent carjacking. “Everybody’s making promises: ‘We’re going to do this and do that.’ Ain’t nobody done nothing yet. I got to deal with it, man. It’s just the way our society is.”

Beaver is more fortunate than many inmates because Missouri compensates exonerated prisoners. DNA cases such as his have led many other states to consider policies that would offer such inmates tens of thousands of dollars for the time they were locked up.

“In the vast majority of these cases, the DNA analysis has left absolutely no doubt that the person was innocent. So people have begun applying for automatic compensation, which is really not adequate,” said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law.

Most states offer no automatic compensation to exonerated inmates. Of the 22 states that do, the amount of financial assistance varies greatly.

In states without compensation programs, some inmates sue and are awarded millions of dollars. Others have no grounds for a lawsuit and get nothing.

Inmates like Beaver accept whatever the state deems appropriate — in his case, $50 for each day spent in prison. He will receive more than $181,000 from the state, paid in annual installments of about $36,500.

Earlier this year, inmate advocates made a largely unsuccessful push in 13 states to update or expand compensation programs, according to The Innocence Project, which represents inmates fighting to have their convictions overturned.

Vermont was the only one to create a new compensation program, agreeing to pay inmates at least $60,000 a year, with no maximum. In Texas, lawmakers doubled compensation payments from $25,000 to $50,000 for each year served. New Hampshire pays no more than $20,000, regardless of the length of time spent in prison.

The federal prison system has one of the most generous compensation policies, paying up to $50,000 a year to exonerated inmates and $100,000 for those on death row.

Warden said compensation programs are spotty because exonerations were rare in the past — just 1,300 in U.S. history.

But genetic testing has made them more common. By late August, 207 prisoners were exonerated by DNA, according to the Innocence Project. More than half of those exonerations happened in the last six years.

The state compensation check has helped, Beaver said, but it isn’t enough to help him get back on his feet.

“They should have said: ‘Here’s a job working for the city,’ ” he said.