The Texas Supreme Court last week unanimously ruled that a wrongfully convicted person on parole at the time of his or her conviction is indeed entitled to full compensation under state law governing exonerees. Billy James Smith was on parole for a 1970 robbery when, in 1986, he was handed a life sentence for aggravated sexual assault. In 2006, DNA testing proved Smith’s innocence, and he subsequently filed for compensation totaling nearly $1.6 million ($80,000 per year for the 20 years he’d been locked up). Comptroller Susan Combs denied full compensation, withholding roughly $66,000. She ruled that because he’d been on parole at the time of his wrongful conviction, he should be denied some of that money based on the “concurrent-sentence restriction.” (If someone is serving a sentence for a crime he or she did commit, they’re not compensated for concurrent imprisonment related to a crime the person did not commit.) According to Combs, there was no difference between time spent on parole and time spent in prison, and she withheld a portion of Smith’s compensation. He asked her to reconsider, but she refused, which led him to request the Supreme Court review.
This article appears in March 11 • 2011.