NCIP Client Receives Compensation

On March 16, the Northern California Innocence Project (NCIP) at Santa Clara Law celebrated a major victory: client Darwin Crabtree was granted compensation by the California Victim Compensation Board (CalVCB) for the nearly 10 years he spent in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. This has been a multi-decade odyssey for Crabtree and his family—he was convicted in 1991 and released in 2001, though it wasn’t until 2017 that those convicted in California no longer in custody could challenge their convictions. This change, which came about through an NCIP-supported law, allowed the court to vacate Crabtree’s conviction in 2018. During the March 16 CalVCB board meeting, Crabtree said that, after a long and arduous process: “this represents the end—and I am thankful for that.”

NCIP Supervising Attorney Paige Kaneb addressed the CalVCB board members and those in attendance and remarked how Crabtree endured this process with “incredible grace” until the law was finally changed. “Everything pointed to his innocence and we had just one problem—he had already served his time ... he had served his parole. When he came to us with all of this evidence, the law required that you have to have standing to challenge your wrongful conviction by being in custody still. We had to ask him to do the impossible, and that was to keep waiting.” Kaneb added that while nothing will ever change what Crabtree endured, “we do at least get to compensate him for his time erroneously served.”

Deputy Attorney General Jessica Leal said that the Attorney General had no objections to granting compensation and that Leal was “personally glad to see this day come for Mr. Crabtree.” The CalVCB board members unanimously approved the motion for compensation.

Crabtree is the fifth NCIP client that has received compensation from the state of California in the last 12 months. These recent grants of compensation are based on a California law that was recently amended thanks to work by the NCIP and the California Innocence Coalition to make compensation statutes fairer.