Connecticut’s Claims Commissioner J. Paul Vance Jr. recently resigned his position. He had been at the center of a controversy for awarding $16.8 million to four men whose murder convictions in a 1996 gang-related shooting were overturned. Because of this recent award, lawmakers are looking to make changes to the state’s wrongful incarceration statute.
The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled the four men were wrongly convicted due to prosecutorial misconduct. They spent nearly two decades in prison and were released in 2013. All charges against them were dropped after it was discovered that a key witness had been offered a plea deal, on unrelated charges, in exchange for his testimony. The witness lied during the trial and said he did not have a deal. And prosecutors never corrected the record.
The question is: did this case meet the last criterion of the state statute on wrongful incarceration awards?
William Dunlap, a constitutional and criminal law professor at Quinnipiac University, said the last criterion is that "a person can apply for compensation if the criminal charges against him were dismissed on grounds of innocence or on a ground consistent with innocence."
“The jury was lied to. The jury didn’t have all the facts when they found that these men were guilty beyond a reasonable doubt," Dunlap said. "Their constitutional rights were violated, and that is extremely serious, ?but the ambiguous language in the statute here, having to do with compensation, does not make clear whether that sort of thing is a ground consistent with innocence."
But state Attorney General George Jepsen sees the wording and the intention of the statute differently.
“The language is not vague, and the reason that the statute was enacted was clearly premised on factual innocence," Jepsen said. "It was really imagined for cases, and there have been three of them, where DNA evidence shows conclusively that the individual who was convicted and incarcerated was in fact innocent, and so the premise of the statute is factual innocence."
But in terms of the law, what does factual innocence mean in this case?
“If innocence means factual innocence, that they actually did not kill or ambush those men — then we don’t know whether they’re innocent or not," Dunlap said. "But if innocent means not guilty, we do know they’re not guilty in the legal sense. Because they’ve not been properly convicted."
State Sen. Fasano thinks the statute implies that the legislature should be in involved in wrongful incarceration awards.
Victor Sipos is the attorney representing the four men. He agrees that it’s critical to undo the wrongs that can be revealed through DNA evidence, but believes the commissioner’s ruling is consistent with how numerous courts have interpreted similar laws.
“In fact, I'm unaware of any court, anywhere in America, that has ruled that the four Connecticut men would not satisfy the eligibility standards set forth in the Connecticut law," Sipos said.
As far as Connecticut law, professor Dunlap pointed out, Connecticut’s system of having one claims commissioner in this role is rather unusual.
"First of all, most states don't have a single commissioner doing this," Dunlap said. "Most of them have statutes that spell out the rules and allow people to go into court. But in Connecticut, we have this claims commissioner who reviews the claims and makes decisions according to a very complex statute."
This compensation case wasn’t the first time the commissioner has come under fire. The office has been criticized for the backlog of undecided cases as well. Currently the commissioner, along with a very small staff, is tasked with sifting through thousands of claims and deciding whether a case is entitled to be settled by direct compensation, or should be passed along to be argued in court.
Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano feels the wording of the statute strongly implies that the legislature should be in involved in wrongful incarceration awards.
“I think you might have had a different outcome if we thought this was on automatic pilot, where one individual in government can make a multimillion-dollar decision without one legislator being able to voice their opinion. I gotta tell ya, until a couple years ago, I don't think the governor even had that authority,” Fasano said.
With millions of taxpayer dollars potentially involved in future awards, Fasano, along with other legislators, is asking for changes to the state’s compensation statute. But, according to Dunlap, there are proposals to get rid of this office altogether and radically change the system. How soon, remains to be seen.
