I once again write to express my disappointment with decisions, such as Wilson v. State of New York, 2013-049-015, reported in the article, "Two Cases Test Parameters for Awards for Unjust Conviction," (May 9) regarding the Unjust Conviction and Imprisonment Act of 1984 (§8-b, Court of Claims Act). In Wilson, Court of Claims Judge David Weinstein felt he had no choice but to deny compensation for an apparently innocent man who served nine years in prison. He came to that conclusion solely because Abdullah Wilson’s conviction was vacated on the grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel. Weinstein quite correctly noted that the act only permits such claims if the conviction was vacated on certain specified grounds, such as newly discovered evidence. Ineffective assistance of counsel is not denoted as such a predicate basis.
There are, thus, two significant concerns raised by this provision. First, from a policy perspective, innocent people have no chance at compensation if their lawyers’ inadequacy is what caused them to be convicted. Suing the lawyer, as I have done several times, is mostly futile, as criminal defense lawyers rarely carry malpractice insurancea factor encountered in every single one of my lawsuits. Yet, my client in each of these cases was every bit as innocent as those whose convictions were overturned on the basis of newly-discovered evidence.
