It is time for New York state to make a confession of its own: innocent people don’t confess to crimes they didn’t commit unless they are coerced, and a confession to a crime one didn’t commit ought never be a bar to a wrongly imprisoned person’s right to compensation.
Last month the Court of Appeals issued a highly anticipated decision in Warney v. New York, 2011 N.Y. LEXIS 502, where a wrongly convicted man, someone proven to have been not merely “not guilty” but actually innocent, was blocked by two lower courts from seeking compensation for his wrongful imprisonment because he had originally confessed, and in the lower courts’ eyes, did “by his own conduct cause or bring about his conviction,” a bar to recovery under New York Court of Claims Act §8-b, the Unjust Conviction and Imprisonment Act.
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