IF you are in prison and then you're proven innocent and released, do you get paid for all your time served?

Question

IF you are in prison and then you're proven innocent and released, do you get paid for all your time served?

Answer 1

There's generally no entitlement to compensation.  Under some rare circumstances, there may be common law entitlements to damages, and it isn't unheard of that people will sue, but governments will typically pay out of their own free will following miscarriages of justice, particularly if there's been a lengthy period of time served.

Just recently, the Canadian government paid out $6.5 million to Steven Truscott, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1959.  (Because he was only 14 at the time, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.)  He was acquitted on a new appeal last year.

Could he have sued them for the money?  Probably not successfully, though you never know.  But regardless, there's a distinct sense in the public that he deserves some sort of compensation, and so the government is happy to accommodate that and pay out a reasonable amount of the taxpayer's money to ease everyone's consciences.

Answer 2

No general law requires it.  Especially if the trial was fair in the first place.  However, when it happens, many state legislatures will pass a special law allowing for damages to those wrongfully imprisoned.  It doesn't happen automatically,but those who can get someone lobbying on their behaf often get compensated

Answer 3

No entitlement to compensation, unless you can prove the prosecutors acted in bad faith - withheld evidence that might have cleared you, etc.