A state Senate committee held its first meeting Tuesday to examine how authorities handle issues involving people who are wrongly convicted of crime in Georgia.
Committee Chairman Josh McKoon, R-Columbus, won his chamber’s approval earlier this year to look at what he calls “expungement reform.” He expects recommendations by next year’s legislative session.
A lawyer by trade, McKoon has represented clients trying to erase wrongful convictions. It is a hard process to navigate, he said, even before financial awards may be considered for some, as was the case most recently in March.
That was when the Legislature agreed to give $400,000 to Lathan Word, who was exonerated after spending 11 years and nine months behind bars for a 1999 armed robbery. Legislators came to that amount because it was what Word could have earned in the U.S. Marine Corps if he had reported to basic training as planned before his arrest when he was 18 years old.
Georgia is among almost two dozen states without a formula to decide how much wrongly convicted inmates, freed after years of incarceration, can be compensated.
Among other complaints before the committee are a confusing set of mandates or, in some cases, no rules at all about how to handle requests to clear a person’s record. There are also significant delays in processing paperwork.
The panel is expected to hold two more meetings, with the next scheduled for October.
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