A bill awaiting Gov. JB Pritzker’s signature could boost state payments to wrongfully incarcerated people and, for the first time, make children eligible for the compensation.
The legislation would hike the maximum payout to $50,000 for each year spent behind bars and $25,000 per year on probation or parole, or under an order to register as a sex offender. The bill would also remove an inflation-adjusted cap that, most recently, was less than $300,000 — no matter how many years the exoneree spent in prison.
The measure passed the state Senate unanimously this month after clearing the House in a nearly unanimous vote last year.
“This will make a huge difference,” said Stephanie Kamel, director of the Springfield-based Illinois Innocence Project, which pushed the bill for years.
“Illinois has been a leader in criminal legal reform in other areas, but we have fallen way short in giving restitution to men and women who have been determined to be actually innocent of the crime for which they were wrongfully convicted,” Kamel said.
The compensation can be a lifeline to exonerees who wait years for a settlement or verdict in a civil rights lawsuit.
It’s also vital to those who cannot prove police or prosecutorial misconduct and, therefore, stand little chance of a big payout.
Nearly half of the 215 exonerees who’ve received Court of Claims compensation since 2022 have received less than $80,000, according to a WBEZ analysis of data obtained from the court through an open records request.
Under current law, the longer an exoneree has spent in prison, the less compensation they tend to get per year, Kamel said.
Last year’s highest awards were $286,003, according to the records. The five exonerees who received that sum averaged more than 21 years in prison after their wrongful conviction, according to National Registry of Exonerations data.
“They are often released from prison with inability to find housing and they have to go out and start making a living, oftentimes decades after being wrongfully imprisoned,” Kamel said. “This ability to get up to $50,000 per year can help them as they start to rebuild their lives.”
Since 2022, Court of Claims awards to wrongful conviction claimants have totaled $25.4 million, according to the WBEZ analysis. The compensation per year of incarceration after conviction averaged about $17,000, the analysis found.
What the Court of Claims has paid to exonerees is far less than what Illinois cities and counties have shelled out under settlements and verdicts since 2022. That sum exceeds $810 million, WBEZ found.
The bill awaiting Pritzker’s signature does not require a $50,000 per year payment. The Court of Claims, rather, would retain discretion to pay “up to” that amount.
“They should pay the maximum to everybody who suffered from this unbelievable harm as a result of the state’s conduct, but the law doesn’t require them to do that,” said Joel A. Flaxman, an attorney in Chicago who works for claimants.
Expanding the compensation to children requires addressing a legal technicality.
As a teenager on the South Side, Terrell Champagne was arrested four times on drug charges by Chicago police officers led by corrupt Sgt. Ronald Watts. Champagne was “adjudicated a delinquent” — the equivalent, under Illinois law, of a juvenile conviction.
Champagne was locked up for about 10 months on those charges. Years later, he was among 191 people whose Watts-tied cases were tossed out. But, because he was not technically “convicted,” he could not get Court of Claims compensation.
He and three other Watts-linked former “delinquents” challenged that denial but lost in an Illinois appellate court in 2024.
“It’s unfair,” said Champagne, now 35. “If adults get the certificates, I feel it would only be fair if the juveniles could get it too.”
The fiscal 2027 state budget that lawmakers approved this month includes a $10 million increase for one portion of the Court of Claims budget — an amount “due largely to the potential change in maximum awards” for exonerees, according to attorney Brad Bucher, the court’s administrator.
The General Assembly sent Pritzker the bill to boost payouts more than three weeks ago. A spokesperson for his office said he carefully reviews “everything that comes across his desk … before signing.”
If Pritzker does sign on, the law would take effect immediately.
The Court of Claims receives about 8,000 filings a year. Besides wrongfully convicted people, payouts go to violent crime victims, vendors owed money from a previous fiscal year, people injured due to negligence or wrongful acts by state employees, and dependents of public-safety workers killed in the line of duty.
The court consists of seven judges appointed by the governor who serve six-year terms. They meet monthly to act on recommendations from 16 part-time regional commissioners who conduct trials and take evidence.