Senate Appropriations Chairman Blake Tillery, a Vidalia Republican, said the majority party is taking the issue of compensating people who’ve been exonerated seriously.

“We’re very concerned about wrongful convictions and wrongful prosecutions,” he said. “There’s a lot of concern in our body that we may have 21 new resolutions to consider next year.”

Last week, three of the men who spent decades in prisons for crimes the system said they didn’t commit visited the Capitol in hopes of drumming up support for themselves, but mostly for changing the way the state determines compensation, they said.

“The compensation is what we’re shooting for, but, to me, even though I struggle daily and I live (check to check), I think there’s a higher calling here,” said Joey Watkins, a Rome resident who served more than 22 years for a 2000 slaying the courts later determined he did not commit. “I think it’s to try to help change something. That’s why I’m here. Not so much for myself.”

Watkins was released from prison almost a year ago.

Holcomb’s bill to change the process and all six resolutions seeking compensation for those who’ve been wrongfully convicted were assigned to a Senate budget subcommittee. That subcommittee did not hold hearings for this year’s two new resolutions, something that frustrated state Rep. Katie Dempsey, a Rome Republican who sponsored the compensation resolutions for Watkins and Silver Creek resident Lee Clark. Clark was exonerated nearly two years ago after being wrongfully convicted in a 1996 killing.

Having been on the other side of the compensation question as a member of the House Appropriations Committee, Dempsey said it was an honor working with Watkins and Clark.

“I’ve listened to the appeals (for compensation),” Dempsey said. “I want to help them be able to take a step forward in their lives. It’s been hard not getting a hearing in the Senate because we are holding people’s lives — that were found to be innocent — in our hands.”

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