Hawaii Supreme Court Revives Exonerated Prisoner’s Quest for First Payout From Wrongful Conviction Fund
On September 27, 2024, the case of exonerated Hawaii prisoner Alvin Jardine drew the state Supreme Court into a battle for a payout—any payout—from the state’s wrongful conviction fund. The state has avoided liability so far with a tendentious reading of the law.
State lawmakers created Ch. 661B of the Hawaii Revised Statutes in 2015, providing those exonerated of crimes a payment of $50,000 for every year that they were wrongfully incarcerated. A decade later, however, the fund has paid out exactly nothing to any of the former prisoners exonerated of their criminal convictions.
The language of the law predicates payment on “actual innocence.” But “not guilty” is not the same thing legally as being “actually innocent,” according to the state Supreme Court. “We don’t have any case law that talks about actual innocence,” explained attorney William Harrison, who represents a former prisoner exonerated of a sexual assault conviction.
Jardine’s case began when he was sentenced to prison for rape at age 20 in 1992. He then waited 20 years for advances in DNA technology which eventually cleared him of the crime. Released from state prison then without so much as an apology, he was among the first to file for compensation after Ch. 661B became law.
But the state refused to pay because Jardine had no court declaration of “actual innocence”—a standard that has never been defined. Jardine sued, but a trial court ruled against him. Noting that the vacatur order reversing his conviction called the new DNA evidence likely to result in a finding of not guilty, the trial court said that “likely” wasn’t good enough to establish “actual innocence.”
On appeal, the state Supreme Court disagreed, saying that “likely” was enough to establish a factual dispute for the lower court to resolve. At the time Jardine was exonerated, before Ch. 661B was adopted, there was no such thing in Hawaii law as “actual innocence”—so he couldn’t ask the exonerating court for such a declaration, the Court noted. Moreover, legislators clearly intended the law “to compensate wrongfully convicted individuals, including those convicted before its enactment.” The Court asserted that interpreting it “to require such ‘magic words’ or an express finding of actual innocence would contradict its purpose.”
The trial court’s order was thus vacated, and the case was remanded for a determination of Jardine’s “actual innocence” from the available evidence. Jardine was represented before the Court by Honolulu attorney Ewan C. Rayner. See: Jardine v. State, 556 P.3d 406 (Haw. 2024).
Hawaii is one of 38 states providing compensation for wrongful convictions, but it is the only one of those states to deny every claim so far. Maine and New Hampshire have also made no payments under similar statutes passed in 1993 and 1977 respectively; however, no one has filed for a payout under those laws.
A bill introduced in the Hawaii Senate on February 14, 2025, would amend Ch. 661B to provide a presumption of entitlement to compensation whenever a prisoner’s criminal sentence is vacated. Application for payment would become automatic, and if criminal charges were not refiled within two weeks, the state would owe the first $5,000 monthly payment toward the amount due under Ch. 661B. See: S.B. 169, Hawaii (2025).
Additional source: Honolulu Civil Beat
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