New Jersey Man Will Finally Receive Compensation After False Rape Conviction More Than 30 Years Ago

Dion Harrell, a New Jersey man wrongly convicted of rape more than 30 years ago, will finally receive a financial settlement from the state, according to NJ.com.

Dion Harell to finally receive compensation

For two years, Harrell has been battling with the State of New Jersey to be compensated for a crime he didn’t commit.

Now, Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration has agreed to settle the case and pay Harrell for some of his lost time.

Harrell and officials in the state Treasury reached a settlement agreement in June, according to Harrell’s attorney, Glenn Garber.

Garber declined to disclose the settlement amount, citing his client’s concern for privacy.

He was falsely accused of a crime

Harrell was falsely accused of rape in 1988, was falsley imprisoned for four years in prison and more than two decades as a registered sex offender.

He wasn’t exonerated until 2016, after the Innocence Project took his case and obtained new DNA testing ruling him out as the man who raped and robbed a 17-year-old victim in a Long Branch parking lot.

“People looked at me the wrong way,” Harrell told NJ Advance Media in a February interview.

“I come to a barbecue, people say, ‘Watch out for the kids, he’s here.”

How Dion Harrell successfully sued for compensation

NJ.com reports:
“In 2018, Harrell sued the state for compensation, but the state Attorney General’s Office, which represented Treasury officials in the case, argued that the law required him to file his claim within two years of his release from prison, meaning the window for his payment had long closed.

That would have required Harrell to sue the state claiming wrongful conviction back in 1997, as a convicted rapist out on parole.

His case seemed lost after a state appeals court sided with the Murphy administration, finding the two-year window meant Harrell didn’t qualify, even though courts had previously determined he served time for a heinous crime he “indisputably did not commit.”

Officials in the Treasury and state Attorney General’s Office initially said they were enforcing the letter of the law, but facing public pressure over the use of state resources to deny an innocent man compensation, authorities reversed course.”

Garber said the settlement will also allow Harrell to seek additional payment if a bill currently before the state Legislature expanding the type and amount of compensation for mistaken imprisonment becomes law.

Photo: NJ.com