After insisting for nearly two decades that he was innocent of a sexual assault at knifepoint on Maui, Alvin Jardine got a judge to let him try to prove it. His lawyers sent a green and white checkered tablecloth found at the crime scene to a lab to test it for DNA, the Associated Press reports. When police had investigated the crime in 1990, DNA testing of bloodstains and other bodily fluids on the tablecloth was inconclusive. That changed in 2008, as technology advanced, and a new analysis showed that the DNA wasn’t Jardine’s. Jardine’s conviction was vacated and he was freed about three years later. He should be a prime candidate for a 2016 state law intended to compensate those wrongfully convicted with up to $50,000 for every year they spent behind bars. But the process hasn’t panned out for him — or anyone else — because it requires him to prove he is “actually innocent.” Defense attorneys and even state supreme court justices have said that standard is nearly impossible to meet. “We don’t have any case law that talks about actual innocence,” said William Harrison, who represents a man who has been seeking compensation for four years since his sexual assault convictions were vacated. “When you go to trial, it’s either you’re guilty or not guilty.”
In cases involving all five people who have sought money in Hawaiʻi, the Attorney General’s Office has argued that none of them have shown that they’re innocent. All of the cases are pending, including two that have gone to the Supreme Court. Thirty-eight states have similar laws, and most require that people prove their innocence in some way, said Jeffrey Gutman, a professor of clinical law at George Washington University who works with the National Registry of Exonerations. But he characterized Hawaiʻi’s law as more stringent than many states. And this is the only state that has paid nothing to claimants, according to the registry. Two other states haven’t made any payments, either, but no one has filed a claim there. State Sen. Karl Rhoads, who was one of the sponsors of the compensation bill, has introduced another bill this session to make it easier for those who’ve been wrongfully imprisoned to get compensation.
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