UTAH JUSTICE TO IMPROVE

How do you compensate someone who spends 20 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit? How about $800,000, for starters? Under a bill to be proposed in the Legislature, a person wrongfully convicted of a crime would be compensated at the rate of $40,000 a year. The rate would climb to $70,000 for someone on death row. The bill, drafted by Rep. David Litvack, D-Salt Lake City, also outlines compensation for lost wages, physical and mental health care, and other services necessary for reintegration into society. "If someone is wrongfully convicted, if they spend time in prison and are exonerated, the state would compensate for what happened to them, monetarily," Litvack said Thursday.

He said the bill is not meant to punish the state, but to atone for an error. "It's someone whose life was changed. Their prospects for the future are dimmed. They've lost years off their life," Litvack said. "This is to atone for that and compensate for that."

If the price tag seems high, Utahns can take some comfort in knowing that exonerations are rare. "It isn't going to happen every day," said Jensie Anderson, University of Utah law professor and president of the Salt Lake City-based Rocky Mountain Innocence Center. "But when it does happen, we need to take seriously the time that's been taken away from them."

According to Anderson, Utah had its first exoneration two years ago, when Bruce Dallas Goodman - now 55 - walked out of prison 19 years after he was arrested for fatally beating a 21-year-old Salt Lake City woman. The partly nude and bound body of Sherry Ann Fales Williams was found next to an Interstate 15 on-ramp near Beaver in November 1984. Goodman was convicted in 1986 of second-degree murder and sentenced to five years to life in prison.

Testing of crime scene bodily fluids showed the perpetrator had the same blood type as Goodman, who had been living with Williams in Nevada. But DNA testing last year revealed the fluids were not Goodman's. Prosecutors agreed to Goodman's release, but - pointing to other circumstantial evidence - they won't concede he is innocent of the crime. Because the bill would not be retroactive, Goodman would not benefit by passage of the compensation bill, but Anderson said he is a poster child for such legislation.

Goodman is living a transient lifestyle as he searches for work and tries to reconnect with his three children, who are now adults. "His adjustment has been very difficult," Anderson said. She said there were 328 exonerations between 1989 and 2003 - 145 inmates were exonerated by DNA; 183 were cleared by other sorts of evidence. "Most spent about 10 years in prison," she said. "That's a good chunk of their life taken away."

Anderson said it is impossible for wrongly convicted inmates to simply pick up their lives where they left off because the world has left them behind. Technology has advanced, family members have died or become estranged; and people are not welcoming to ex-cons, even those who have been exonerated. "This law will give them a chance to start over," she said.

The bill is the brainchild of University of Utah law student Heather Harris, who began researching wrongful convictions last spring as part of her course work. "It shocked my conscience how they were treated once they were exonerated," said Harris, who plans to be a criminal defense attorney. "Instead of whining about it, I decided to help with the fight." Harris said at least 20 other states have adopted wrongful-conviction compensation laws.

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