County Officials Decry 50-50 Split With State Of Payouts For Erroneous Convictions

By Bryan P. Sears, Maryland Matters

December 11, 2025

County officials said a change in state law requiring them to pick up half the cost of compensating individuals who were erroneously convicted puts more pressure on their budgets and holds county governments responsible for events they cannot control.

For years, the state picked up the tab for compensating those who were imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. That changed this spring with passage of a budget package that needed to close a $3.3 billion deficit: As part of that effort, the budget bill included surprise language that required counties to pick up half of the payouts.

Worcester County Administrative Officer Weston Young said counties — especially smaller ones with comparatively smaller budgets — should not be on the hook.

“I want to state clearly that in Maryland’s 24 counties, you cannot find one that does not support justice for exonerees, and all of us wholeheartedly back compensating the wrongfully incarcerated,” Young said Wednesday during a panel discussion at the Maryland Association of Counties winter conference in Cambridge.

“If you are innocent, it is an unimaginable nightmare to be wrongly incarcerated,” he said. “But that said, fairness would demand the state take responsibility, take sole responsibility.”

He said the change in law that forces counties to pick up half the costs of compensating exonerated inmates is pitting the counties’ desire to right past wrongs against a need to have certainty in their own budgeting.

State, Wicomico County to pay over half a million for man’s wrongful conviction

Young and other officials pointed out that county governments have no hand in the bad convictions. State’s attorneys are independently elected, and county executives and commissioners have no say in the cases prosecutors pursue or how they are prosecuted.

Young notes a current application for compensation that involves a person who was convicted on the strength of testimony from a state forensic expert. The conviction was tossed out after it was learned the expert misrepresented some credentials.

Prosecutors are not retrying the three-decade-old case, and the person convicted — unlike many who have received compensation — has not been pardoned or exonerated.

Counties also are not a party to appeals or the administrative hearings where payouts are decided.

“There’s not a single county actor that’s involved in this,” said Wes Adams, a former Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney who is now the county attorney for Charles County.

In 2021, then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed the Walter Lomax Act, which was named for a man who spent nearly four decades in prison for a murder he did not commit. It clarified state law governing the compensation of those who are wrongly convicted.

Before the law passed, compensation was not mandatory and was frequently denied. The Walter Lomax Act established a formal process, including hearings before an administrative law judge. It also set a formula for compensation based on the state’s most recently available median income. A daily rate is then applied to the number of days the individual spent behind bars for the erroneous conviction.

Since the bill passed, there have been about 40 compensation cases filed with the Office of Administrative Hearings.

“In all of the Walter Lomax Act cases, the claimant must prove by clear and convincing evidence that they did not commit the crime. So, in a lot of cases, honestly, most cases, the individual is not able to meet that burden,” said Syeetah Hampton-El, executive administrative law judge.

Syeetah Hampton-El, executive administrative law judge. (Photo Bryan P. Sears/Maryland Matters)

Just 18 of the applications have been approved for payments, Hampton-El said. Of those 18 cases, 11 of them — 61% — came out of Baltimore City. Three were from Wicomico County. Two were from Baltimore County. Charles and Harford counties accounted for one each.

Awards range from $250,000 to a high of $2.7 million — two exonerees received that amount.

In most cases, the tab for counties sounds small but in smaller counties, even small amounts can have an outsized feel.

“Our primary concern has to be to seek justice, but in these cases, the unpredictable financial burden can be crushing some of our jurisdictions as well,” Young said. “The state dictates changes to an expansion of the Walter Lomax Act … to include additional offenses. Expanded to allow estates to recover in the case of deaths. These are just the expansions that have happened so far, and expansions to include additional compensation with that.”

Some state’s attorneys said they also are aware of the conflict between seeking justice and fiscal issues.

Wicomico County State’s Attorney Jamie Dykes said prosecutors are obligated to protect the innocent, including those wrongly convicted. Those efforts, she said, come with a cost.

“From our perspective, while my primary concern is not money, it is justice and the public’s confidence,” Dykes said. “I’m also a taxpayer, a resident, and I am not ignorant to the realities that the new legislation, or the past legislation, puts on all of us, especially small communities.”

Young said his county’s share of the pending compensation case could surpass $2 million — about 1% of the county’s budget. That’s money that could be used to pay portions of the state’s expensive education reforms or other county priorities, he said.

Young fears more cost shifts by the state.

“The 50-50 move with the counties sets a long-term policy risk for all of us,” Young said. “It’s a dangerous precedent where they could do this for more and similar shifts. They’re saddling counties with unpredictable tabs. That’s a threat to fiscal stability statewide if counties start struggling.”