False Imprisonment and Wrongful Convictions

Being Imprisoned for a Crime You Did Not Commit Is False Imprisonment Too

Imagine walking into a courtroom expecting justice, only to hear a jury announce “guilty” when you know you did nothing wrong. The years that follow aren’t just about bars and cells. They’re about birthdays missed, jobs gone, families broken. That is false imprisonment in its harshest form.

At Horn Wright, LLP, we’ve spoken with men and women who carried the label “convict” for decades until DNA tests or recanted testimony finally cleared their names. They walked out free but also carrying scars the public rarely sees. Freedom after a wrongful conviction doesn’t erase the time already stolen. It only begins the next fight, the one to hold the system accountable.

False imprisonment isn’t limited to a few hours at a police station or a wrongful shoplifting accusation. When the justice system convicts the wrong person, every day served is an unlawful confinement, even if it was wrapped in court orders and official paperwork.

How Wrongful Convictions Lead to False Imprisonment Claims

Wrongful convictions don’t happen by accident alone. They often grow out of specific failures: an officer pushing a shaky eyewitness too hard, a lab technician overstating forensic results, a prosecutor hiding evidence that could have cleared the accused. Sometimes it’s outright misconduct, sometimes it’s sloppy work. The result is the same, an innocent person ends up behind bars.

In New York, courts have recognized that once a conviction is overturned because it lacked legal foundation, the confinement that followed loses its justification. That makes it false imprisonment. The law sees no difference between being locked in a retail backroom for an hour without cause and spending years in prison on a void conviction, both involve liberty taken unlawfully.

The emotional difference, though, is staggering. A wrongful conviction doesn’t just cost time. It reshapes a life.

New York Remedies for Exonerated Individuals

New York actually has a statute built for this. The Court of Claims Act, section 8-b, gives people who were wrongfully convicted a way to sue the state. Unlike many other civil suits, these claims don’t require you to prove bad intent, just that you were convicted, imprisoned, and later exonerated on grounds showing innocence.

Damages under this law can cover a wide range of losses: missed income, therapy costs, reputational harm, and the simple but devastating loss of years. Courts here have awarded substantial sums when someone spent decades behind bars. The recognition is that no amount of money truly balances lost freedom, but the law must at least try to restore dignity and stability.

For families, these remedies matter because they acknowledge the truth: the harm didn’t end when the prison gates opened. It continues long after release.

Evidence Needed to Support These Cases

Getting a conviction overturned is only part of the process. To win compensation, you need evidence that supports not just innocence but also the harm caused by confinement.

Legal paperwork is step one, the decision vacating the conviction, the exoneration order, or DNA results that cleared your name. That establishes the foundation. Then comes the harder part: showing how imprisonment damaged you.

Medical records help connect depression, anxiety, or physical illness to years spent in prison. Employment records, or the absence of them, highlight the wages and career growth lost. Family members’ testimony paints the human side: children growing up without a parent, relationships collapsing under the weight of incarceration.

New York’s discovery process allows attorneys to request documents from police departments, prosecutors, or forensic labs. Those files often reveal the very misconduct, hidden reports, questionable practices, that led to the wrongful conviction. That evidence strengthens not only the compensation claim but also the story of how the justice system failed.

Vermont Places Stricter Caps on Damages Than New York For Wrongful Conviction Cases

The remedies available vary sharply across state lines. Vermont, for example, places tight limits on what a wrongfully convicted person can recover. Even if someone spent 20 years in prison, the payout may be capped under state law. Those caps mean victims often walk away with compensation that doesn’t even begin to match the harm.

New York takes a broader approach. There are no rigid caps under the Court of Claims Act, and courts have issued awards that reflect the true scale of loss, millions of dollars in some cases. That difference shows the value of New York’s legal framework. It recognizes wrongful conviction as more than a technical error. It sees it as a life-altering injustice.

This contrast underscores something bigger: justice isn’t equal everywhere. Where you live determines how much the law values the years stolen from you.

Emotional And Financial Harm from Lost Years

Money can’t buy back time, but courts still try to measure the loss. And those losses are enormous.

Wrongfully convicted people often leave prison with no savings, no work history for years or decades, and reputations scarred by a conviction record that doesn’t always vanish instantly. Employers may hesitate to hire, even after an exoneration. Housing, credit, and basic stability become uphill battles.

The emotional toll is just as severe. Many exonerees develop PTSD. They struggle to adjust to everyday routines, technology changes, family dynamics shift, society moves on without them. Children grow up, partners leave, parents pass away. These gaps can’t be filled.

Courts in New York weigh these harms when awarding damages. They don’t look only at wages lost but at the full picture: the humiliation, the broken trust, the psychological cost of years in confinement that never should have happened.

Civil Rights Claims for Wrongful Convictions

State remedies aren’t the only path. Federal civil rights law opens another. Under 42 U.S.C. §1983, victims can sue when their wrongful conviction was tied to constitutional violations. That might include police fabricating evidence, prosecutors hiding exculpatory information (a violation recognized in Brady v. Maryland), or officials coercing confessions.

These claims are powerful because they shift responsibility from “the system” to the individuals and agencies who caused the harm. They also allow courts to order attorney’s fees under §1988, which makes it easier for victims to pursue claims without being crushed by legal costs.

Civil rights lawsuits don’t just bring compensation. They expose patterns, force reforms, and sometimes spark accountability that goes beyond a single case. For many victims, that broader impact matters as much as the personal remedies.

Horn Wright, LLP, Advocates For The Wrongfully Convicted

Being cleared of a crime doesn’t mean life goes back to normal. The wounds of wrongful conviction run too deep for that. But the law gives exonerated individuals real options, to be compensated, to hold agencies accountable, and to rebuild. At Horn Wright, LLP, we fight for people whose lives were stolen by wrongful imprisonment. Our civil rights attorneys know how to prove innocence in court, how to document lost years, and how to demand remedies that reflect the scale of harm. If you’ve been wrongfully convicted, we’ll stand with you and pursue every path toward justice the law allows.