When Elmer Daniels left Delaware prison 39 years after a court ruled in 2018 that he was wrongfully convicted, he was turned out into the world in the middle of winter with little more than the shirt on his back, according to his attorney.

That’s because Delaware is one of about a dozen states that has no mechanism to compensate individuals who wrongfully spent portions of their lives locked behind bars. These are people who spent years, or in some cases, decades making no real money in prison as the world and their connections on the outside have moved on without them.

Once again this year, some Delaware lawmakers want to create a compensation program to acknowledge the unfairness of being wrongfully locked up. Senate Bill 169 is the latest effort to do that.

The bill has passed a Senate committee. It’s main sponsor, Kyra Hoffner, a Smyrna Democrat, said she is revising the bill and hopes it will be up for a vote in the Senate in the coming weeks.

How would it work?

The proposed program has been revised multiple times, but Hoffner explained how the program would work.

The bill would set up a compensation fund for individuals whose convictions were overturned and either dismissed, dropped or retried resulting in an acquittal. These situations most commonly occur when people locked up work for years to present to the court flaws in their original conviction and in some cases, new evidence pointing to their innocence.

In some cases, like the situation faced by Mark Purnell in recent years, the courts can overturn someone’s conviction, and prosecutors, who often have the choice of whether to retry or drop the case, will dangle freedom in front of the individual if they plea to a lesser crime.

So people who also plead no-contest after their conviction is overturned and remanded for further proceedings are also eligible to apply for compensation. Purnell’s case was ultimately dropped by prosecutors. He spent 16 years wrongfully locked up.

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The legislation includes protections to disqualify people convicted of other crimes tied to the overturned conviction or people who purposefully take the blame for someone else in a criminal case. People who have a conviction the court has not deemed illegitimate and who are simply pardoned would not be eligible, Hoffner said.

Those who qualify would be allowed to file a court petition seeking compensation. It would be up to them to make a showing to the court of their innocence, Hoffner said. This showing would be judged by what’s called a “preponderance of the evidence,” a lower standard than the ”beyond-reasonable-doubt” standard used to convict people, she said.

Prosecutors in the Delaware Department of Justice would have the opportunity to refute and present evidence in opposition to the person’s claim.

James Moreno is the executive director of the Delaware Innocence Project, a nonprofit that investigates and pursues claims of wrongful incarceration. He emphasized that it’s only fair for the state to help people when they’ve taken away their time and freedom unfairly.

“Nobody is saying let’s hand out a pot of money; there is a standard that must be met and it is about fairness,” Moreno said.  

How much money are we talking about?

Individuals who clear the court hurdle will be eligible to receive compensation based on their years spent wrongfully behind bars and a few other factors.

Those who served time on death row are eligible for $100,000 for each year wrongfully locked up. Those who served time off death row, which is most people who would qualify, would be eligible for $75,000 per year.

Those wrongfully put on probation or those paroled after a wrongful conviction or people wrongfully made to register as sex offenders would be eligible for $50,000 for each year in the system, Hoffner said.

The bill also includes provisions to help cover attorneys fees, reimbursement of restitution a person was wrongfully ordered to pay as well as reimbursement for “reintegrative services” like mental and physical health care costs incurred between the person’s release and their grant of compensation, Hoffner said.

The bill includes provisions that would tie the compensation award in the future to changes in inflation as well as timing the disbursement of payments to those who qualify. The fund would be managed by the state treasurer.

How often does this happen?

It is rare for people to have their cases overturned in Delaware. People in prison typically don’t have money so it’s not an incentivized area for private attorneys to work in. That’s the gap that the Delaware Innocence Project, a relatively new organization compared with counterparts in other states, seeks to help fill.

According to the National Registry of Exonerations, four people in Delaware have successfully overturned their convictions in the past 35 years. Those include Daniels, Isaiah McCoy, Mark Purnell and James Dollard.

Hoffner said Daniels, Purnell and Dollard would qualify under the bill’s current format.

‘Left to fend’ for themselves

When a person is imprisoned, they make little to no money, their marketable skills diminish, they fall behind current technology and lose personal connections and family foundations.

Then, when their conviction is overturned, they are released into a world with new technology, high basic prices to survive and, in the eyes of many potential employers, a black mark of having just recently been released from lockup.

Hoffner added that incarceration also exacerbates one’s health problems. She said the money can’t give someone back their time, but will make their life a bit easier.

“Everyone thinks life goes back to normal,” Hoffner said. “But it is a big struggle.”

Emeka Igwe, Daniels’ attorney, emphasized the difficulty of reintegrating into society after being released for so long.

“There was nothing from the state at all,” Igwe said. “He was basically left to fend for himself.”

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The office of Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings did not comment on the proposed legislation when asked. Leadership in Delaware’s judiciary declined to comment.

The legislation is not a new push in Delaware. In 2019, a similar bill was introduced, passed through a House committee and died without House Democratic leadership bringing it up for a vote.

Lawsuits often fruitless

Supporters say another common misconception is that civil courts allow wrongfully convicted people to seek damages. Daniels’ case is an example of how that often isn’t the case.

The courts provide broad civil immunity to police and prosecutors carrying out their work administering justice.

Daniels sought compensation via a civil lawsuit. His rape conviction was overturned because some of the basic evidence underpinning his case was based on science that society now regards as unreliable as well as other evidence that undercut his original prosecution. After his case was remanded, prosecutors said they couldn’t label him “innocent,” but dropped the case. He was 57 when he was released from prison.

Earlier this year, a judge dismissed his lawsuit against Wilmington police after he failed to meet the high legal bar that officers knowing or willfully violated his constitutional rights.

“Courts cannot right all wrongs” was the opening line in Judge Stephanos Bibas’s opinion dismissing the lawsuit.

Igwe, Daniels’ attorney, said he is appealing the ruling. He said Daniels has acclimated to life and work outside, but is owed a debt by those that took 39 years from him.

“He was incarcerated in the name of the state,” Igwe said. “He should be compensated by the state.”

Jon Eldan is the founder and executive director of After Innocence, a California-based nonprofit that, among other things, advocates for such compensation programs. He said Daniels’ situation is common to people released after a wrongful conviction: The law in America often provides no route for compensation through civil courts.

“There have been several thousand cases overturned throughout the country,” Eldan said. “The majority of people don’t have a lawsuit.”

Contact Xerxes Wilson at (302) 324-2787 or xwilson@delawareonline.com.