Source: http://federaltaxcrimes.blogspot.com/2010/07/certificate-of-innocence-and-damages.html
Timestamp: 2018-07-20 22:17:48
Document Index: 26512328

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2513', '§ 2513', '§ 2513', '§ 2513', '§ 2513', '§ 2513']

Federal Tax Crimes: Certificate of Innocence and Damages for Wrongful Incarceration (7/24/10)
After setting forth these three requirements, § 2513 specifically characterizes them as “requisite facts.” § 2513 (b). Then, the statute expressly sets forth the only way (again absent pardon) that a person can demonstrate these “requisite facts” in the Court of Federal Claims – by a certificate from the court in which “such facts are alleged to appear.” Id. This intricate statutory scheme renders several conclusions inescapable.
First, Congress clearly did not provide in the unjust conviction and imprisonment act an avenue for monetary compensation to all whose criminal convictions are reversed after incarceration. Rather, the phrasing of the Act and its legislative history proclaim the care with which its framers guarded against opening wide the door through which the treasury may be assailed by persons erroneously convicted. Congress enacted this statute to provide only “certain innocent persons” the ability “to present a claim for financial indemnity” upon “showing their innocence.” Section 2513 compensates only the truly innocent. n2
n2 The legislative history of § 2513 clearly demonstrates a congressional desire to limit the class of persons entitled to relief under the statute. In commenting on the proposed legislation, Attorney General Homer Cummings noted that “[i]deal justice would seem to require that in the rare and unusual instances in which a person who has served the whole or part of a term of imprisonment, is later found to be entirely innocent,” he should “receive some redress.” The Attorney General went on to distinguish the “entirely innocent,” who would merit a certificate of innocence, from those who would not – the “more frequent[ ]” cases in which reversal was based “on the ground of insufficiency of proof or on the question as to whether the facts charged and proven constituted an offense under some statute.” Id. He concluded that any proposed legislation should “necessar[ily] . . . separate from the group of persons whose convictions have been reversed, those few who are in fact innocent of any offense whatever.”
Second, and just as clear as its intent to permit only the “truly innocent” to receive a § 2513 certificate, Congress expressly directed that one seeking the certificate bear the burden of not only “alleg[ing]” but also “prov[ing]” entitlement to the certificate. 28 U.S.C. § 2513(a). Moreover, because it constitutes a waiver of sovereign immunity, the unjust conviction statute has always been strictly construed. Thus, § 2513 imposes a rigorous burden on those who seek a certificate of innocence.
Third, as every court to consider the question has held, the decision to deny a certificate of innocence is committed to the sound discretion of the district court. Accordingly, we review a district court's denial of a certificate of innocence for abuse of discretion, and must affirm that decision unless the court abused its discretion, or unless the findings underlying its decision were clearly erroneous. When a district judge has exercised his substantial discretion to deny a certificate of innocence, we cannot require him to stultify himself by certifying an opinion contrary to his real conviction – no matter what our own view might be – except, perhaps, in a case in which the refusal to certify innocence was completely capricious and without rational basis.
Labels: 28 USC 1495, 28 USC 2512, Not Guilty