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58 Washburn L.J. 493 (2019)
Exonerated, Free, and Forgotten: How States Continue to Punish Wrongfully Convicted through Procedural Hoops and Inadequate Compensation

handle is hein.journals/wasbur58 and id is 505 raw text is: Exonerated, Free, and Forgotten: How States Continue to Punish the Wrongfully Convicted Through Procedural Hoops and Inadequate Compensation Audrey D. Koehlert I. INTRODUCTION Imagine one day being arrested for a crime you did not commit- and worse-imagine you are convicted of that crime. Since 1989, 2360 people have lived that nightmare and have since been exonerated from convictions for crimes they did not commit.1 These exonerees have served an average of 8.7 years, with 121 of those exonerees having been on death row.2 In addition to the humiliation, loss of liberty, and despair associated with a wrongful conviction, many exonerees face additional hurdles upon release through lack of employment, services, and financial support.3 t B.A. 2014, Wichita State University; J.D. Candidate 2019, Washburn University School of Law. Thank you to Kelsey Hodgdon for her guidance and encouragement throughout the writing process and to Professor Gillian Chadwick and Jeremy Koehler for their suggestions and thoughtful feedback. 1. Exonerations by State, NAT'L REGISTRY EXONERATIONS, https://www.law.umich.edu/speciallexoneration/Pages/Exonerations-in-the-United-States- Map.aspx [https://perma.cc/KG7M-V3FU] (last updated Dec. 20, 2018) [hereinafter Exonerations by State]. [A]n exoneration occurs when a person who has been convicted of a crime is officially cleared based on new evidence of innocence. Glossary, NAT'L REGISTRY EXONERATIONS, https://www.law.umich.edu/speciallexoneration/Pages/glossary.aspx [https://perma.cc/WCZ6-YK481 (last visited Dec. 31, 2018). Many exonerees were wrongly convicted of serious crimes, with thirty-eight percent convicted of murder, fourteen percent convicted of sexual assault, eleven percent convicted of child sexual abuse, five percent convicted of robbery, and the remaining thirty percent convicted of drug-related or other crimes. Exonerations by State, supra. 2. Exonerations by State, supra note 1. Although there have been no posthumous exonerations in the United States, some argue there is a strong possibility that a number of innocent men have been put to death for crimes they did not commit. See Jessica Dwyer-Moss, Flawed Forensics and the Death Penalty: Junk Science and Potentially Wrongful Executions, 11 SEATTLE J. Soc. JUST. 757, 760 (2013). 3. Leslie Scott, 7t Never, Ever Ends: The Psychological Impact of Wrongful Conviction, 5 CRiM. L. BRIEF 10, 10 (2010). 493