A new law passed by the Georgia Legislature last week will create a new process and fund to give those wrongly convicted and later exonerated by a court for felony crimes $75,000 for each year they were incarcerated. The legislation will likely benefit Mario Stinchcomb, a Black man who served mor e than 18 years in prison for a 2002 murder that he was exonerated for by a court in 2021. He spoke at a press conference at the state capitol in support of the bill in March. Those years of incarceration “were the roughest years of my life,” Stinchcomb said, adding that it was tough going when he got out of prison in April of 2021 with no support from the state. Though he missed out on seeing his young children grow up, and lost precious time with his family members, including some who died, he was grateful to be reunited with his fiancée in April of 2021. Mario Stinchcomb was exonerated of a murder conviction in 2021 after spending 18 years in prison, and now seeks compensation from the state of Georgia. (Photo: Mario Stinchcomb Instagram Profile) Stinchcomb told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution then that he had set his sights on getting a commercial driver’s license to drive 18-wheelers across the country. And in an interview with Santana Raymond, one of the Central Park “Exonerated Five” on the AJZone podcast, he said he’d like to be a “productive” member of society, and “get a youth [football] team together.” Four years later at the Georgia Capitol, Stinchcomb, who is now married, told reporters he hoped to use the $1.4 million in compensation funds his lawyers estimate the state would pay if his compensation claim is approved to support his fledgling trucking business and health care needs. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Raymond Santana (@santanaraymond) Stinchcomb was 22 on Nov. 6, 2002 when he got into an argument with Jakesha Young, who then ran out of a second-story apartment in southwest Atlanta to get her gun out of a car. As he and Michael Woolfolk leaned out a window, Young fired two shots at them. Both men fired back in self-defense, they later argued, Stinchcomb claiming he fired up into the air. Forensics showed the bullet fired by Woolfolk struck Young in the head and killed her. Both men were convicted in 2004 by a jury of murder and aggravated assault and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Their convictions were upheld on appeal. The driver of the car that Young had jumped into on the night of her death, Jamario Ford, was interviewed by Atlanta Police, but had disappeared by the time of their trial. A detective said he was dead, according to a case study by The National Registry of Exonerations. In 2018, Ford resurfaced, and provided an affidavit corroborating Stinchcomb and Woolfolk’s accounts of the incident. Ford said Young was “extremely drunk” and angry when she got in the car, took a gun out of her purse and shot once in the direction of the balcony while standing outside the car and yelling at the men. She got back in the car and as he was driving away, Young leaned out the window and fired another shot. At that point he said he heard a shot ring out, pierce the hood of his car and hit Young. In July 2019 Stinchcomb’s attorney, Leigh Schrope, filed a motion for discretionary appeal based on the new evidence, which led to an evidentiary hearing before the Georgia Supreme Court, where Ford testified. The Court was persuaded that Ford’s story lent credence to Stinchcomb and Woolfolk’s self-defense argument. Attorney Leigh Schrope (left) successfully represented Mario Stinchcomb (center) in his legal effort to overturn a murder conviction in 2021. Aimee Maxwell (right) of the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office Conviction Integrity Unit investigated his case and helped to exonerate him. The three presented his case at the University of Georgia Criminal Law Symposium in 2023. (Photo: University of Georgia) The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office Conviction Integrity Unit reinvestigated the case, and determined the new evidence was reliable and exonerated Stinchcomb. He was granted a new trial, and on April 14, 2021, a Fulton Superior Court judge signed an order dismissing the case, and Stinchcomb walked out of prison the same day. Woolfolk was exonerated and released a month later. Stinchcomb praised the Fulton Integrity Unit and District Attorney Fani Willis at the time. “They have been the greatest,” he said. “Ms. Willis gave me a chance when she looked into it. She saw we were telling the truth.” But both men have struggled since their release to get compensated by the state for their years behind bars. As of December 2024, Georgia was one of 11 states that did not have a law in place to compensate the wrongfully convicted, noted Georgia Recorder. Under Georgia’s existing process, those who have been wrongfully convicted have to find a state representative who is willing to sponsor an individual compensation resolution in the Legislature and file a claim with the state’s Claims Advisory Board. The resolutions must go through the full legislative process in both the House and Senate, a cumbersome, discretionary and political process that has meant that many resolutions have failed over the years, said Hayden Davis, a board member of the Georgia Innocence Project. He called the current compensation process “inconsistent and fundamentally unfair.” The new law, called the Wrongful Conviction and Incarceration Compensation Act, creates a streamlined process to be managed by the state Office of Administrative Hearings, where an administrative law judge would determine whether a claimant qualifies for compensation, and how much. Appeals by prosecuting attorneys or the state attorney general must be filed within 30 days and resolved within another 30 days. Then the judgment order is sent to the Legislature to pay out. The compensation amounts are standardized — $75,000 per year of incarceration, and an extra $25,000 annually for those sweating it out on death row. Those exonerees who win their compensation claims can also recoup attorneys’ fees and legal costs related to overturning their convictions. If they won any awards in civil court against the state, they must deduct that amount from their claim award. “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,” Rome Republican Rep. Katie Dempsey, a co-sponsor of the bill, said in February. “We need to take care simply of people who have lost so many years of their lives and their ability to make money, have a job, have a family, create stability,” Dempsey told the Associated Press. “Many are at the age where they would be looking at their savings, and instead, there’s none.”  “No amount of money can return those years lost,” Davis told the Georgia Recorder. “But what we can do is provide some resources to help folks rebuild the lives that they’ve been unjustly deprived of for so long, and that’s what this bill would do.” The Georgia Innocence Project has supported the legal battles of 15 clients who have been exonerated from felony crimes, including 10 Black men.Since 1995, 12 Georgians have received compensation and at least 11 more have sought it, according to the Innocence Project. Even some people with strong cases were turned down because they failed to convince lawmakers they were innocent, advocates say. “It’s been frustrating,” Woolfolk said of his multiple efforts to secure compensation from the Georgia Legislature over the last few years. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to keep myself together, but it’s kind of hard to start a career after 40. So I just try to take it step by step and just try to find jobs to keep me above average.” Stinchcomb wrote in a GoFundMe campaign three years ago that he had spent half his life in prison, where he “had to endure unmentionable suffering …and the worst of treatment from an unfair system designed to give people with my skin color the harshest punishment. I never gave up on myself and I maintained my innocence and I continued to fight for my freedom.” After “18 long agonizing years I, with the help of a few amazing individuals, was able to get my conviction overturned,” he wrote. “As an apology from the state of Ga I was given a 25 dollar check and was told to try and salvage what is left of my life. … That I just can’t accept, considering what they took from me.” The new compensation law will become effective on July 1 unless vetoed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp before then, and those exonerated individuals who qualify can begin submitting claims. ‘The Harshest Punishment’: Black Man Received $25 from State of Georgia After Spending 18 Years In Prison for Wrongful Conviction, Now He May Receive $1.4 Million Thanks to New Law ...read more read less