Serving a life sentence for a homicide he didn’t commit, Jofama Coleman studiously averted calendars. It was simply too upsetting to ponder the passage of months after which years disadvantaged of freedom and separated from his younger daughter.
“A method I used to be capable of get via the time, I truly didn’t even take into consideration the times. Day by day was the identical,” he mentioned, recalling stretches when his birthday handed with out his discover.
On Thursday, Coleman sat within the entrance row of a Sacramento listening to room because the official tally of his time behind bars was learn out: 6,481 days. The state Sufferer Compensation Board then voted to translate these almost 18 years right into a payout to Coleman of $907,340, underneath a regulation that gives exonerees with $140 for every day of wrongful incarceration.
“My scenario both makes you bitter or higher,” a smiling Coleman informed the board, including, “though I went via some very robust occasions, I believe I finally triumphed.”
Two different males had been additionally authorized for compensation at Thursday’s listening to. Ronald Velasquez Jr. and Abraham Villalobos had been erroneously convicted within the 2000 killing of a youngster in Downey. The person believed to be the actual killer was slain the 12 months after the homicide, data that surfaced in a re-investigation of the case lately. Each males had been declared factually harmless in a March listening to in Los Angeles County Superior Courtroom.
Velasquez, who spent 23 years in jail, was awarded $1.2 million, whereas Villalobos, who spent greater than 15 years in jail, will obtain $788,060. He was deported to Mexico after his launch. His lawyer, Joseph Trigilio, of the Loyola Legislation College Mission for the Harmless, mentioned on the listening to, “This brings him some measure of justice.”
Velasquez mentioned in an interview that he was grateful for the cash, however added, “Is it truthful? It’s not giving me again members of the family I misplaced, the time I misplaced with my household, all of the issues I missed.”
The exonerated would not have to pay state or federal taxes on the compensation. It additionally doesn’t bar them from pursuing civil fits in opposition to regulation enforcement for mishandling the investigations.
Coleman was convicted of the 2003 drive-by capturing of a youngster in South L.A. As The Occasions chronicled earlier this 12 months, he labored for years within the jail library in Corcoran to show his innocence and later acquired help from a volunteer, a schoolteacher from Topanga Canyon. Their work led to the exonerations of each Coleman and one other man convicted within the homicide, Abel Soto.
The board beforehand awarded Soto $909,720.
Coleman, 41, was incarcerated for 19 years, however he didn’t obtain cost for the complete interval as a result of he was additionally serving time for an unrelated assault cost.
He’s enrolled at UC Riverside with plans to turn into an lawyer for the wrongfully convicted. His daughter, Jocelyne, born after his arrest, can also be a school pupil. He mentioned he hopes to make use of the cash to help her, purchase a house and change the breakdown-prone 1988 Corvette he’s been driving since his launch.
Whereas appreciative of the compensation, which isn’t out there in lots of states, Coleman mentioned, “it doesn’t measure up for positive. I misplaced an important deal, you realize? And, I imply, I nonetheless form of need to reside with the ache of what I went via.”