ATLANTA — There’s another push to pay Georgians wrongfully convicted of a crime for their time served in prison.
The bipartisan bill, sponsored by Rome Republican Rep. Katie Dempsey and Atlanta Democratic Rep. Scott Holcomb, would pay Georgians for each year they spent in prison for a crime they didn’t commit.
Currently, lawmakers take compensation requests for wrongful convictions on a case-by-case basis.
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The new bill would create a legal process for them to make those claims.
Mario Stinchcomb is a free man, but only after serving 19 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. When the state eventually released him, he came out with no money, no savings, not even any social security.
“Those were the roughest years of my life,” Stinchcomb told Channel 2′s Richard Elliot.
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This new bill would create a process for Stinchcomb and other wrongfully convicted Georgians to get compensated for their time in prison.
“What we are trying to do is create a system that is fair, that removes politics from the process and to compensate people for the time they lost,” Holcomb said.
The proposed bill creates a system where an administrative law judge can make the decision. It could award Stinchcomb and other wrongfully convicted Georgians $75,000 for every year they served in prison.
“It’s time for us to take a strong stance, to take care of all who are wrongly prosecuted and served time for something, a crime they did not commit,” Dempsey said.
If lawmakers approve the bill, Stinchcomb could get about $1.4 million, which he said he’d use to help his fledgling trucking business and pay for healthcare.
“I do feel like those 19 years, I would’ve been a lot more successful, that whatever they could give me, but it’s a blessing,” Stinchcomb told Channel 2 Action News. “Whatever they give me is a blessing.”
Lawmakers have tried before to get similar bills through the General Assembly. Last year’s effort failed on the final day of the legislative session.
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