Two Baltimore-area state senators say that if neither the governor nor the governor-elect takes steps to compensate Bernard Webster, the Baltimore man released from prison last week after 20 years of wrongful incarceration, they will push for a bill that pays Webster for his time behind bars.
Sens. Ralph M. Hughes and Delores G. Kelley said they expect either Gov. Parris N. Glendening or Gov.-elect Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. to pardon Webster, 40, who was convicted in 1983 of a rape that DNA testing shows he did not commit. Webster needs the pardon before he can ask the state Board of Public Works for remuneration.
But it is unclear whether it's possible for Webster to go through the cumbersome process of collecting compensation. Technically, he is no longer convicted of anything - a judge overturned his rape conviction last week. There may not be anything in Webster's case for a governor to pardon. And without a pardon, under current law, he cannot get money.
At least one man who was wrongfully convicted in Maryland - Kirk Bloodsworth, exonerated of rape and murder charges in 1993 - was pardoned and received $300,000 in compensation. But Webster's defense lawyers say they don't know how it was possible for Bloodsworth to get a pardon, and no private attorney has offered to represent Webster in his future dealings with the state.
The apparent Catch-22, along with general confusion over Webster's status, highlights the gap in Maryland law - a gap mirrored throughout the country - when it comes to compensating the wrongfully convicted.
Glendening spokeswoman Raquel Guillory said the governor's legal staff did not know whether it was possible to offer Webster a pardon or how else he might receive compensation. She said the governor had no comment on the case.
Ehrlich was on vacation yesterday and unavailable to discuss the case, his aides said.
"It's hard to imagine how government can turn its back on people who have been wrongfully convicted," said Douglas L. Colbert, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law. "A governor's pardon should not be needed. The finding itself of a wrongful conviction ought to be sufficient to make the person eligible for compensation. The governor should not be an obstacle."
Hughes and Kelley agree. They said the state needs to do something for Webster, who walked out of prison last week with no money, no family, no home and no job. They said there should be laws outlining the state's obligations.
"If a person's liberty has been denied them because of a false conviction, society is just to give some kind of compensation," said Kelley, a Baltimore County Democrat. "We obviously have got to fix that."
Hughes, a Democrat from Baltimore City, said he would introduce a bill in the next session mandating financial compensation and other forms of assistance to people such as Webster.
Webster is living alone in temporary housing. He is "following up" on many of the job offers he received after his exoneration became public, according to the state public defender's office. He has so far declined requests for interviews with the news media.
As inadequate as Maryland laws may appear, the national situation is worse, said Aliza Kaplan, deputy director of the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, an organization working to identify and free the wrongfully convicted. Only 14 states in addition to Maryland have any compensation policy, Kaplan said.
"It doesn't say much," she said.
Defense attorneys and justice groups have lobbied Congress to pass the Innocence Protection Act, a package of federal criminal justice reforms that include compensation measures for the wrongfully convicted. But neither the House nor the Senate has voted on the bill this year.
That, defense attorney and advocates say, leaves a gaping hole in the criminal justice system.
"What we're seeing is a social phenomenon," said Wayne Smith, executive director of the Justice Project, a nonprofit veterans group that works with the wrongly convicted. "Hundreds of people are getting out of prison. Congress has not caught up; state legislatures have not yet passed legislation."
Smith compared the wrongfully convicted to veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.
"These men and women, their public lives are ruined," he said. "Their sense of self is shaken. Their belief in our system is destroyed."
Bloodsworth, the Cambridge man who spent nearly nine years behind bars, including time on death row, before DNA results exonerated him in 1993, said the state could not do too much for people such as himself and Webster.
Life is never the same, Bloodsworth said. He said that he still becomes frantic in a room without windows and that he loses concentration when he's around too many people.
It's impossible to explain the stress on people who are released from prison after years of helplessness, he said - and impossible to overstate the need for counseling.
"This guy, he's been eating with a plastic spoon on a metal tray for 20 years," he said of Webster. "Eating with a fork is going to be a culture shock."
Bloodsworth has been sharing his story with law school classes, with legislators and on the Oprah Winfrey Show in what he says is an attempt to help the criminal justice system evolve. He has also lobbied for the Innocence Protection Act.
"We need to start addressing this," he said. "I find it so ludicrous that we're trying to sweep all of this under the rug. We need to have a public forum and talk about this thing, and try to get it straightened out to the point where these people are taken care of."