news-record.com

The state has released Greg Taylor from prison after he served 17 years for a crime he didn’t commit, but its obligation to him hasn’t been fulfilled.

There’s the matter of compensating him with hard cash for the more than 6,000 days he spent behind bars, away from family and friends —  all the time knowing he was innocent.

The state has set the payout at $750,000 — the most it can award him. Yet it’s far from a done deal.

In order to qualify, Gov. Bev Perdue first must issue a pardon. Without one, Taylor can’t apply for the money.

Questioned following his exoneration by the Actual Innocence Commission, the governor agreed that the state should provide money for time lost.

She told The News & Observer of Raleigh, “The man was done wrong and the state and country have a responsibility to right that wrong.”

Adding, “You couldn’t sell me 17 years of my life for $800,000.”

Perdue, however, didn’t commit to a pardon, saying she hadn’t yet received Taylor’s request.

But the power to grant financial awards to the wrongly convicted should rest with the innocence commission itself, not the governor.

Granting money for past injustices  ought to be separate and apart from issuing a pardon, which restores citizen rights forfeited upon conviction of certain crimes. Governors should continue to have that responsibility.

In a sense, the three-judge commission is a work in progress, and Taylor’s was its first high-profile appeal. Adjustments still can be made.

When it convenes, the General Assembly should give the first-in-the-nation panel the authority to make such grants swiftly and fairly, based on particulars of each case.

As for a pardon, the governor should grant it, just as predecessor Mike Easley did in the case of Winston-Salem’s Darryl Hunt, who was wrongly convicted of rape and murder.