Court, Which Affirmed $102M In The Limone Boston FBI Case, Questions Whether $1M Per Year Is Too Much, Even For Someone Who Was Wrongfully Convicted?
According to The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals In Limone v. US $1 Million Per Year "approach[es] the outermost boundary of what might be thought conscionable" and is "at the outer edge of the universe of permissible awards."
The Court explained:
That leaves the naked claim of excessiveness (a claim that encompasses the government's charge that $1,000,000 per year is simply too rich). This question is not free from doubt. The district court's awards are considerably more munificent than the amounts that this court would have awarded in the first instance. In our view, the awards approach the outermost boundary of what might be thought conscionable. Cf. Baba-Ali v. State, 878 N.Y.S.2d 555, 568 n.7 (N.Y. Ct. Cl. 2009) (chronicling awards of lesser amounts).
Still and all, the awards are by no means unprecedented, and the "shock-the-conscience" test cannot be administered in a vacuum. What is shocking under one set of facts may be acceptable (even if only marginally so) under different circumstances. See United States v. Santana, 6 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir. 1993).
We are frank to say that, here, the awards for wrongful incarceration are high enough to be troubling. But when we take into account the severe emotional trauma inflicted upon the scapegoats, we cannot say with any firm conviction that those awards are grossly disproportionate to the injuries sustained. After all, some cases involving analogous factual scenarios have resulted in comparable damage awards. See, e.g., Thompson v. Connick, 553 F.3d 836, 865-66 (5th Cir. 2008) (upholding jury award of $14,000,000 for 18 years of wrongful incarceration), vacated on other grounds by ___ F.3d ___, ___ (5th Cir. 2009) (en banc) [No. 07-30443, slip op. at 1]; Newsome v. McCabe, 319 F.3d 301, 302-03 (7th Cir. 2003) (involving award of $15,000,000 for 15 years of wrongful incarceration); White v. McKinley, No. 05-203, 2009 WL 813001, at *22 (W.D. Mo. Mar. 26, 2009) (upholding jury award of $14,000,000 in compensatory damages for 5 ½ years of wrongful incarceration); Sarsfield v. City of Marlborough, No. 03-10319, 2006 WL 2850359, at *1 (D. Mass. Oct. 4, 2006) (reflecting judicial award of more than $13,000,000 for 9 ½ years of wrongful incarceration). Consequently, we conclude that the district court's awards must stand.
In concluding that the awards in this case fall short of shocking the conscience, we think it important to make clear that the $1,000,000 annuity selected by the district court as the baseline for its calculation should not be understood as a carob seed for measuring the harm caused by wrongful incarceration generally. Applying a literal reading of the statement in Limone IV that "wrongfully imprisoned plaintiffs were entitled to compensation of at least $1 million per year of imprisonment," 497 F. Supp. 2d at 243 (emphasis supplied), one district court recently has treated the $1,000,000 per year baseline as a floor for damages arising out of wrongful incarceration. See Smith v. City of Oakland, 538 F. Supp. 2d 1217, 1242-43 (N.D. Cal. 2008) (citing Limone IV). We regard that characterization as unfortunate. As we have emphasized, the district court's awards are at the outer edge of the universe of permissible awards and survive scrutiny, though barely, only because of the deferential nature of the standard of review and the unique circumstances of the case.
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