For wrongfully convicted the battle begins after release from prison

Chicago: Tabitha Pollock was asleep when her boyfriend killed her 3-year-old daughter. Charged with first-degree murder because prosecutors believed she should have known of the danger, Pollock spent more than six years in prison before the Illinois Supreme Court threw out the conviction.

"Should have known," the high court ruled, was not nearly enough to keep Pollock behind bars.

Five years later, Pollock remains in limbo, freed from prison but not free from the snags of a wrongful conviction that upended her life.

With a felony record, she cannot become a teacher, as she wants. She cannot collect damages from the Illinois government.

To fully clear her name, Pollock - as well as a dozen or so other former Illinois inmates who have been exonerated - needs an official pardon, which only the governor can give. She applied in 2002 but has received no word.

Flooded

"I was raised to believe America is a wonderful country, but I have serious doubts about Illinois now," said Pollock, 37. "This whole experience has taught me not to have any hopes or dreams."

A spokesman for Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich said the governor is flooded with petitions and has not had time to focus on Pollock's case. Pollock's predicament is becoming more common across the country as more people are exonerated. The New York-based Innocence Project has tallied 215 wrongful convictions in the United States that have been reversed on the basis of DNA evidence.

Many of those former prisoners are seeking redress from the governments that mistakenly jailed them.

When the authorities do not certify innocence, "in effect, the sentence just goes on", said Stephen Saloom, policy director of the Innocence Project.

He said 22 states and the District of Columbia provide official compensation in one form or another.

Alabama pays exonerated ex-prisoners $50,000 (Dh183,500) for each year they were incarcerated. New Jersey pays $40,000 or twice the inmate's previous annual income. Louisiana offers $15,000 a year plus counselling, medical care and job training, according to Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions.

In Illinois, to regain a certifiably clean record and collect compensation - a lump payment of $60,150 for five years or less in prison, or $120,300 for six to 14 years - an exonerated inmate must obtain a "pardon based on innocence" from the governor.

"The governor is not acting on them," said Karen Daniel, senior staff lawyer with the Center on Wrongful Convictions, which is pressing Blagojevich to decide on Pollock's case and others.

New law

Illinois law gives exonerated former prisoners fewer services than paroled convicts. A Bill recently passed by the Illinois House and now under consideration by the Senate would change that, while allowing cleared inmates to receive a "certificate of innocence", which would have the same power as a pardon, without going to the governor.

Robert Wilson's experience with the Chicago courts was a case of mistaken identity. He spent nine years behind bars purportedly for slashing June Siler, 24, on February 28, 1997. The next day, at the same bus stop, police arrested Wilson. Interrogated for nearly 30 hours, he signed a confession and was charged with attempted murder. Wilson pleaded not guilty, but Siler pointed him out in court as the man who cut her face and throat. The jury were not told that five other victims - all white, as Siler was - were attacked and slashed at Chicago bus stops in the two weeks after Wilson's arrest. The slasher was caught and confessed, but police never asked him about the Siler case.

Nine years later, a court ruled that the jury should have been told about the other cases. Siler came forward and said she had fingered the wrong man.

Wilson, at long last, was free. Yet he left prison with few prospects and deeply in debt because he was assessed child support for his three boys while behind bars. "I feel so bad, I figure I would be better off back in the penitentiary," said Wilson, 52.