Innocent inmates could have chance at compensation

On a December night in 1990, a 25-year-old woman living in Haiku, Maui, was awakened by the sound of wind chimes on her front door. Moments later, an intruder forced her into a chair and repeatedly raped her at knifepoint as her two young children slept in a nearby room.

A man named Alvin Jardine was later arrested for the brutal assault. The victim had identified him in a photo spread. He would spend two decades in prison.

But it was a crime he didn’t commit, according to attorneys with the Hawaii Innocence Project who spent years investigating the case.

They say the case was fraught with problems, including misconduct by the lead investigator and sketchy eyewitness identifications. Furthermore, nearly a dozen witnesses placed Jardine at home at the time of the crime.

Most of the evidence from the crime scene had been destroyed by the time the Innocence Project took up the case about a decade ago. But attorneys were able to track down one item that had been stored separately — a green and white checkered tablecloth that had covered the chair the woman was raped on.

DNA tests concluded that three samples of male secretions taken from the cloth did not match Jardine. At least one of the samples was semen, according to David Haymer, the DNA expert in the case.

“It clearly indicated someone else — another man’s DNA,” Haymer, who is a professor of cell and molecular biology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

In 2011, Maui Circuit Judge Joel August ruled that the DNA evidence could have changed the outcome of the case and annulled Jardine’s conviction.

Jardine was 21 years old and had a 2-year-old daughter when he was taken into custody, according to court documents. He served part of his 35-year sentence in Mississippi and Arizona.

When he was brought back to Maui for his 2011 court hearing, he hadn’t seen his family in years. He was released hours after the judge’s ruling with no money or support services.

Nearly five years after his release, “he is still working to rebuild his life,” said Matson Kelley, an attorney for Jardine.

Hawaii is one of 20 states that don’t provide any compensation for the wrongfully convicted. But that could change this year if a bill that’s making its way through the Legislature is successful. House Bill 1046 would require the state to pay the exonerated $50,000 for each year they were incarcerated.

For Jardine, this could amount to about $1 million.

Similar bills failed in the Legislature last year. But this year, the House bill has a new supporter — state Attorney General Doug Chin, who had testified in opposition to last year’s measures.

His support has given advocates for the wrongfully incarcerated new hope that this year’s effort will be successful.

After last year’s proposals became entangled in questions about the criteria for eligibility, levels of compensation and adequate protections for the state, Chin asked the Hawaii chapter of the American Judicature Society to come up with recommendations.

A 16-member special committee composed of judges, local attorneys and government officials and led by Circuit Judge Jeannette Castagnetti and Mark Bennett, a Honolulu attorney and former Hawaii attorney general, met over the course of several months last year. Their recommendations are largely incorporated into HB 1046.

“This is a real tight, clean bill,” said Bill Harrison, a criminal defense attorney who served on the special committee. He also works with the Hawaii Innocence Project.

Chin submitted testimony in support of the bill to the Legislature, saying that it provided adequate protections for the state.

The bill unanimously passed the House Judiciary Committee last week, but it still has a long way to go. It needs approval from the House Finance Committee and a vote by the full House before it can move over to the Senate for debate.

The hearing brought out the bill’s supporters, including longtime advocate Kat Brady, coordinator for the Community Alliance on Prisons, and attorneys who have worked with the Hawaii Innocence Project. So far, no one has submitted testimony against the bill.

DeMont Conner, a convicted felon who has become an advocate for both victims and the incarcerated since his release, told the committee that it was time for the government “to step up to the plate and also be held accountable.”

“I was in prison for about 27 years total and the majority of people with me were pretty much all guilty. We all sit there, we talk, we know. But for a very few in there, there’s some serious questions regarding why they are there,” he said. He emphasized that he isn’t one of the innocent.

“When we commit crimes, we are held highly accountable for our actions. We get stiff sentences and we got to do the time,” he continued. “So what about when the government makes a mistake and the government sends someone to prison? That person cannot be a father to their children, that person cannot be an asset to the community. Instead they are languishing in prison for years and years.”

More than 1,700 people have been exonerated in the United States since 1989, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, a database maintained by the University of Michigan Law School.

The database lists three people in Hawaii, including Jardine. It also includes Mark Anderson, who spent nine days in jail for terroristic threatening, and Shaun Rodrigues, who spent more than seven years in prison on kidnapping and robbery charges.

Rodrigues was pardoned by Gov. Neil Abercrombie in the hours before he left office.

The Hawaii Innocence Project is working on about a dozen more cases in which they think the person may have been wrongfully convicted, said Ken Lawson, the organization’s co-director.

It’s not clear whether any of the three people in Hawaii who have been listed as exonerated would actually qualify for compensation under HB 1046. But the bill does afford them a process for petitioning the state.

The definition of exoneration is different from state to state. It’s an issue that Harrison said the special committee grappled with before deciding that someone has to be declared “actually innocent,” which provides the state extra protection against false claims, but can also make it harder for people who were wrongfully imprisoned to gain compensation.

Under the bill, gubernatorial pardons must state that the person is innocent, which isn’t the case for Rodrigues. Abercrombie presumably pardoned Rodrigues because he thought he was innocent or there was insufficient evidence, but it doesn’t state this in the document.

“That may exclude Shaun,” said Harrison, who represented Rodrigues and was instrumental in securing his pardon.

Jardine’s case may also face challenges.

It wasn’t up to the Maui judge in 2011 to declare Jardine guilty or innocent. He set aside Jardine’s conviction based on the new evidence and ordered a retrial. Harrison said that means Jardine is now innocent until proven guilty.

The Maui prosecutor’s office chose not to pursue the case.

Maui County Prosecutor John Kim told the Star-Advertiser that it would have been difficult to prove the case since the evidence has been destroyed. He also said that the victim didn’t want to go through a new trial.

Kim maintains that Jardine is guilty.

“He wasn’t wrongfully convicted. He was convicted,” said Kim. “Judge August decided to give him a new trial based on DNA evidence that didn’t point to anybody.”

It would ultimately be up to the Attorney General’s Office and Circuit Court to decide whether Jardine is entitled to compensation, Harrison said, though county prosecutors are allowed input.

Jardine also sued Maui County for compensation. Maui County Corporation Counsel Patrick Wong said the case was settled last month, but didn’t respond to a request for details of the settlement.

Monetary compensation can help those who have spent years in prison get back on their feet, but it doesn’t erase the years lost in prison.

After his release, Jardine told reporters that he’s had a hard time holding down a job and figuring out how to interact with people on “the outside.”

“I’m still trying to find Alvin. I’m still trying to get him back,” he said during a 2013 television interview on “Matt Levi Investigates.” “Sometimes I watch cars passing by and I think these guys got to go here and got to go there, to the store or the bank. They got to go do something, and that is what I want to be doing — busy with life. But I still got a past to deal with.”