Wrongfully Convicted Man Denied Compensation after 20 Years of False Imprisonment
Government board denies claim, argues Atkins "has not met his burden"

SAN DIEGO, March 18, 2010 - For more than 20 years, Timothy Atkins languished in prison for a crime he did not commit. He was abandoned by the justice system and labeled a murderer. His conviction was reversed in 2007 after the California Innocence Project found evidence proving that his conviction was based on the false testimony of a key prosecution witness who was pressured by police to lie about the crime. 

Although his nightmare in prison has come to an end, Atkins has been denied even a nominal compensation for his wrongful incarceration. His claim was rejected by a government board specifically created to assist people like Atkins to get their lives back after erroneous convictions.

Timothy Atkins was arrested and eventually convicted of the 1985 murder and robbery of Vicente Gonzales in Los Angeles. Gonzales and his wife Maria had been driving home from a concert on New Year's Eve when they were accosted by two African-American men in the neighborhood of Venice. 

The two men had guns and demanded money from the couple. When Vicente did not react quickly enough, one of the men shot him in the chest, and the two ran away. Maria Gonzales only saw the perpetrators for a few seconds, but described one of the men as approximately 5'6" in height, weighing 135-145 pounds, with a gaunt face and bulging eyes. She later identified Timothy Atkins as that man, even though at the time he was 6'0" and weighed 175 pounds.

Prosecutors primarily relied on the testimony of Denise Powell, a resident of Venice, who told police she heard Atkins later that day confess to her that he had committed the crime with a friend. Powell testified at Atkins's preliminary hearing, but disappeared before trial.

Twenty years later, investigators from the California Innocence Project found Powell, who told the Project she had lied to police about Atkins’s confession because she had been pressured by police to do so. Her recantation formed the basis for Atkins’s challenge to his conviction in 2007.

Judge Michael Tynan originally presided over Atkins's trial in 1987. In a stunning turn of events, on February 8, 2007, Judge Tynan reversed himself, finding that Powell's recantation "completely undermine[d] the entire structure of the [prosecution] case" and "point[ed] unerringly to innocence." Judge Tynan found further that the description Maria Gonzales gave of the perpetrator "differed so significantly from [Atkins's] actual appearance that it was clearly the ID of another man." After 20 years of wrongful incarceration, Timothy Atkins walked out of prison the next day.

Despite the findings of Judge Tynan, the Victim Compensation and Government Claims Board today denied Atkins's claim for wrongful incarceration, finding that Atkins had not met his burden of proving to them he had not committed the crime. 

Since 2000, inmates who have been wrongfully incarcerated for crimes they did not commit have been entitled to $100 a day for every day of their imprisonment. The compensation statute was enacted to attempt to remedy the growing problem of wrongful convictions across the country. The Victim Compensation and Government Claims Board handles claims of dozens of former inmates like Atkins.

Amazingly, the Board denied his claim even after it found that Atkins was truthful when he testified to the Board that he had not committed the crime, and was a block away from the murder when it occurred. The Board also found that Denise Powell was truthful when she recanted her story that Atkins had confessed to her.

"Tim should never have been convicted of this crime," says Justin Brooks, Director of the California Innocence Project and Professor of Law at California Western School of Law. "He spent 23 year incarcerated for a crime he didn't commit and now he’s being denied his just compensation. There seems to be a disturbing trend in denying these claims lately even when the courts have determined that people like Tim are innocent."