Exoneree Mario Stinchcomb. Ross WIlliams/Georgia Recorder
How much money is a year of your life worth?
That’s the math lawmakers at the Georgia Capitol are grappling with this week as they seek to pass legislation that would change how the state compensates those it has wrongly incarcerated. House Bill 533 is now making its third trip through the Georgia Legislature, with sponsors on both sides of the aisle hoping for its smooth passage.
Under current Georgia law, those who have been wrongfully convicted must find a state representative who is willing to sponsor an individual compensation resolution for them and file a claim with Georgia’s Claims Advisory Board. Those resolutions then go through the full legislative process and must pass committees and floor votes in both the House and Senate before they can take effect. As of December 2024, Georgia is one of only 11 states that does not have a law in place to compensate the wrongfully convicted.
But this year’s legislation, sponsored by Rome Republican Rep. Katie Dempsey, aims to change that by establishing a standardized process under Georgia state law for
people who have been exonerated. The bill would allow administrative law judges — rather than the Claims Advisory Board — to rule on wrongful conviction compensation cases and award a standardized rate of $75,000 for each year of incarceration to each exoneree, with an additional $25,000 added for each year spent on death row.
By standardizing the process of seeking compensation, Georgia can avoid some of the inequities that come from having compensation awarded on a case-by-case basis through the Legislature. Advocates like Hayden Davis, a board member of the Georgia Innocence Project who helped draft the bill, are hopeful that HB 533 will make it through both chambers before lawmakers adjourn on April 4, arguing that Georgia’s existing systems are not well-equipped to handle these types of cases.
“What we’ve seen in a lot of years is resolutions failing, not because of any weakness of the underlying claim, but because of political reasons,” Davis said, adding that the jam-packed 40-day legislative calendar can pose another obstacle. “So the results of this existing ad hoc process is extremely inefficient, it’s inconsistent and it’s fundamentally unfair.”
And for exonerees like Michael Woolfolk, who was wrongfully convicted of the 2002 murder of Jaketha Young in Atlanta alongside fellow exoneree Mario Stinchcomb, those inconsistencies can have dramatic consequences. Woolfolk, whose individual compensation resolution has been sponsored by Rep. Stacey Evans, an Atlanta Democrat, said he is seeking compensation for the third time after two previous compensation resolutions had stalled in the Senate.
“It’s been frustrating,” he told reporters. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to keep myself together, but it’s kind of hard to start a career after 40. So I just try to take it step by step and just try to find jobs to keep me above average.”
Though HB 533 is likely to clear the House, it may face an uphill battle in the Senate, where previous versions of the bill (as well as individual compensation resolutions) have been stalled by Republican opposition. Though the bill would only compensate wrongly incarcerated people who have established actual innocence, Sen. Randy Robertson, a Cataula Republican and former law enforcement officer, has repeatedly voiced concerns over whether people who are receiving compensation are truly innocent or instead freed on a legal technicality.
“My concerns about the bill is how we define ‘exonerated,’” he said. “To me, exonerated is, you bring real evidence showing that an individual did not commit the crime. Exonerated does not mean a technical failure by the juror or a misstatement by a prosecutor while charging the juror, or some other technical failure within the court.”
This year, he also introduced a competing version of the bill, SB 176, which restricts the eligibility requirements for exonerees even further, and offers only $50,000 per year of wrongful incarceration. The bill has not yet cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee.
However, according to HB 533 cosponsor Rep. Scott Holcomb, an Atlanta Democrat, the bill has also been updated since its initial introduction in 2022 to incorporate feedback he’s received on the bill over past legislative sessions. A former prosecutor, Holcomb said he is optimistic about the bill’s prospects this year, despite the competing Senate counterpart.
“I am encouraged that [the Senate] had a bill that was filed,” he said. “That shows that they’re looking at the issue, and it’s something that we’ve certainly studied very hard. I think the proposal that we’ve put forth this year has incorporated a number of good ideas that people brought forward and, I think, improve upon prior versions of the bill.”
And while advocates acknowledge that there is no way to fully undo a wrongful conviction, they hope that future exonerees in Georgia will have a smoother path to justice.
“No amount of money can return those years lost,” Davis said. “But what we can do is provide some resources to help folks rebuild the lives that they’ve been unjustly deprived of for so long, and that’s what this bill would do.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.