Opinion/Natarajan: It’s time to pass wrongful conviction compensation bill Radha Natarajan Radha Natarajan is the executive director of the New England Innocence Project. If you live in Rhode Island and are convicted of a crime you did not commit, wrongfully imprisoned for decades, and then exonerated based on evidence of your innocence, the state that unjustly took away your freedom and subjected you to the trauma and hardship of incarceration will give you absolutely nothing to compensate you or provide you with assistance after you are released from prison. For a small number of Rhode Islanders, the experience of wrongful conviction has tragically been their reality. The New England Innocence Project knows all too well that there is nothing we can do to give back the countless holidays and birthdays spent behind bars. We can’t rebuild the careers lost and opportunities missed — or repair families torn apart. But we can — and must — compensate the wrongfully convicted to assist them in rebuilding their lives after the unimaginable horror of a wrongful conviction.