Abstract
Wrongfully convicted persons face daunting life pressures when released after years of confinement. A patchwork of programs exist around the country to provide support, but the financial assistance that exonerees need is sparce. Some exonerees turn to finance companies, whose loans carry high interest rates. A better solution is an innocence fund: a non-recourse loan fund, repaid out of exoneree compensation or litigation recovery. This article details the structure of one such fund, which has made hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans with zero defaults. The article provides a guide to jurisdictions around the country on how to establish this continuing source of support for innocent individuals who have served years of prison time for crimes they did not commit. * The author acknowledges the great support of Addys Castillo, Poonam Sidhu and Felicity Wang; Judge Karen Goodrow, former director of the Connecticut Innocence Project; Gerald Smyth, retired Chief Public Defender of Connecticut; and the countless individuals in the innocence movement who provided the information conveyed in this paper.
Recommended Citation
Timothy Fisher,
Innocence Loan Funds: A New Approach to Exonoree Support,
23
Seattle J. Soc. Just.
481
(2025).
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/sjsj/vol23/iss3/38