California is set to remove barriers to overturning wrongful convictions after Gov. Gavin Newsom last week approved legislation seeking to simplify the exoneration process.
Newsom signed Senate Bill 97, proposed by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, which removes a number of significant barriers to overturning wrongful convictions, Wiener’s office announced Saturday.
The Golden State leads the nation in exonerations for wrongfully convicted people, overturning over 200 convictions from 1989 to 2013. However, the process to overturn a wrongful conviction in the state remains complex and needlessly arduous, according to Wiener’s office.
To address this, SB 97 will streamline the process for the wrongly accused to have their convictions overturned, the office added.
“Enabling innocent people to avoid unjust criminal penalties makes our justice system stronger,” Wiener said in a statement. “I thank the Governor for supporting this necessary reform.”
The bill, among other things, will direct judges to give great weight to a prosecutor’s concession that a person has been wrongfully convicted, eliminate obstructive technical requirements to ensure that courts can fairly and fully examine newly discovered evidence, and give an exonerated person the ability to have continuous counsel if tried again.
SB 97 also requires that the wrongfully convicted are provided appropriate counsel throughout litigation.
The bill is sponsored by The California Innocence Coalition.
Scott Weiner is career whore politician that Bay Area voters re-elect every time….you reap what you sow.
Make no mistake about it: Their goal is to release everybody. This is simply a palatable start.
Do they care about these people wrongly or rightly convicted? Nope.
This is about real estate. It always comes down to money.
I’d rather see legislation to deal with situations like the following. Police in the Los Angles area were chasing a known to be dangerous felon. The suspect ran into a printing business, tossing the owner out, and unknown to the police he then left the area. The SWAT team laid siege on the printing business believing the suspect was holed up inside. They fired more than 30 rounds of tear gas to flush the suspect. 13 hours later the swat team leaves empty handed. The business owner has $60,000 of damage. His insurance won’t pay for it as they don’t cover “acts of the government.” The police are ignoring him. Lawyers are presently seeing if constitution’s Fifth Amendment can be applied “Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” https://ij.org/press-release/a-swat-team-destroyed-a-north-hollywood-small-business-now-the-owner-is-fighting-for-compensation/
Is our justice system that screwed up that we are putting innocent people in prison? I doubt it. Only if you are a Republican are you put in jail on drummed up charges.
Can you site examples?