Legal Commentary

Wrongful Conviction Admitted, But Will Compensation Be Approved?

By TChris

This is one of those rare cases in which a District Attorney's office has admitted a mistake without being forced to do so by DNA evidence or other conclusive proof of a defendant's innocence. For that Guy Randolph is grateful, even though he spent ten years in prison and another seven years as a registered sex offender after his release.

Randolph was cleared after prosecutors agreed that the case against him was weak from the beginning. There was no physical evidence tying him to the crime, and the victim initially had said he was not her attacker. During the grand jury investigation, she described her attacker in ways that did not match Randolph.

Randolph was indicted and pleaded guilty under the Alford plea, which allows a defendant to assert innocence while acknowledging that the state has enough evidence for a conviction.

Randolph suffers from schizophrenia, which might account for his decision to enter into an Alford plea. It is difficult to understand why his lawyer would have advised him to do so, if that's what happened, in light of the weak evidence.

Randolph is now seeking compensation from the State of Massachusetts for his wrongful conviction. Whether he will receive it is unclear, given that the burden rests on Randolph to prove his innocence, and the absence of DNA evidence to make his innocence conclusive.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on July 09, 2008 (boomark / email).