What do the wrongfully convicted get in Florida after being exonerated? Would you believe $100.00 and a bus ticket?

Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee petitioned the state 19 times over two decades seeking compensation for the dozen years they lost as innocent men in prison, nine sitting on Death Row. Each time, conservative Republicans and old-South Democrats slapped them down.

When the men finally got their money, $500,000 apiece, Pitts was so frustrated that he didn't show up at the obligatory ceremony with lawmakers to mark the event. Inmates who are exonerated by DNA testing, cleared by prosecutors, released by judges, even pardoned by the governor are not automatically entitled to compensation under Florida law for their years of wrongful imprisonment -- as they are in more than a dozen other states.

When the wrongly convicted walk out of prison in Florida, they get $100 and a one-way bus ticket. This kind of treatment should no longer be tolerated. Particularly in Florida with its high rate of exonerations.

No such law exists in Florida, a state with some of the most notorious cases of wrongful conviction. Vindicated men and women are left with two sobering options: Persuade a lawmaker to file a bill seeking compensation in the conservative state Legislature, or file a civil lawsuit seeking damages.

'It shouldn't be that every time someone is exonerated, we should have to go and make a personal plea before a state legislature,'' said Morrison of the Innocence Project. ``We have a moral obligation to help them. It should be a law.''

The states, of course, won't be passing such bills any time soon with their budget crises. It's another reason we need to pass a federal Innocence Protection Act--hopefully it will have a provision for the "government to mandate that federal Department of Justice money be withheld from any state that doesn't have a system on the books compensating the wrongfully convicted."