The Intersection of Extra-Legal Factors and the Financial Redress Received by Death-Row Exonerees

• In Event: Roundtable: Reentry and Support

Abstract

As of March 2016, 156 individuals have been exonerated from death row in the United States of America. Although the Supreme Court has declared that exonerees suffer physical and psychological damage equal to that of torture (Battalgia 2012), the government has not created a mechanism that enforces financial redress for the sufferings of exonerees (Costa 2005). Of the few scholars who discuss the aftermath of wrongful conviction that an exoneree experiences, most only discuss the legal factors that impede exonerees from receiving financial redress. This research paper will investigate the extra-legal factors that may decrease the likelihood of an exoneree receiving financial redress based on the weight these same factors hold on discriminatory practices in the criminal justice system. Findings of this research show that the only factor with a significant effect on financial redress is if official misconduct contributed to the wrongful conviction. A lack of significant findings is likely due to the small sampling size in this study.

Author

• Tiffany Merritt, University of North Carolina at Greensboro