I'm not sure that they'll be able to recover against the state, given that they at one point did admit complicity. I wrote the following analysis over at my pitiful blog last December:
(Between my first and second years of law school I summer interned for a Judge of the NYS Court of Claims, the court of original jurisdiction for unjust conviction and imprisonment cases (commonly called 8-b claims) in New York State.)NOTE: Though I am admitted to the NY Bar, this is way (WAY) outside my area of current expertise, so the preceding should not be taken as legal advice. (Or relied on by anyone for any reason. ;-)I worked that summer on an unjust conviction and imprisonment case that had been heard by another Court of Claims judge, a judge who passed away after the trial but before he drafted his opinion. I listened to the transcript tapes of the entire trial & reviewed all filed papers. My post is based upon this experience and a quick refresher peek I took at the Court of Claims website today.
Claimaints (what plaintiffs in the Court of Claims system are called) must not only prove that they are not guilty of the crime for which they were convicted/imprisoned, they must also demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that they had nothing to do with the crime, and that "he did not commit any of the acts charged in the accusatory instrument or his acts or omissions charged in the accusatory instrument did not constitute a felony or misdemeanor against the state."
The burden of proof required for a plaintiff to prevail on a case brought for wrongful imprisonment under the Court of Claims Act is very high, so high that the Judge I interned for stated that it could almost never be met. He told me that essentially someone had to prove that they are not only innocent, but that they never admitted guilt nor claimed to have any role in the crime.
So, right off the bat any plea-bargained defendants can never bring a claim, nor can anyone who has ever made any admission of complicity in the crime.
Defendants must in essence prove themselves not just innocent, but they must have maintained all along that they are innocent, and they must not be guilty of any lesser crimes arising out of the original incident.
I'm not terribly familiar with the fact pattern in the Central Park Jogger case, so I leave it as exercise for the reader to determine applicability.
UPDATE: Just to be clear, this discussion deals with what it takes to win a monetary judgment against NY State for unjust conviction and imprisonment. It presupposes that the claimaint has already had their conviction(s) overturned.