Fairly new word(?): "exoneree"

[Laurence Horn]

Given that neither "okratini" nor "discourse harassment" are eligible
contenders for the WOTY list, I have another nominee, one not created
by an ads member.  From Saturday's New York Times:

================
The New York Times
May 10, 2003, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

  SECTION: Section B; Page 1; Column 4; Metropolitan Desk

  HEADLINE: Exonerated, but on Their Own: Helping Those Cleared by DNA

  BYLINE:  By MICHAEL WILSON

...By the time they are released from prison, many exonerees have
lost their homes, savings, vehicles, spouses and custody of their
children.

-Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), in letter to A.G. Ashcroft urging
program to help prisoners released after being cleared of crimes by
DNA
================

  There were 155 hits on google, but some are the French participle,
an interference problem plaguing -ee research.  Nexis has just 6
hits, none earlier than 2/24/03; since this putatively involves the
first instance of a DNA exoneration, I thought it was worth citing in
a fuller form:

The Washington Post
February 24, 2003, Monday, Final Edition

A SECTION; Pg. A01

HEADLINE: Md. Man's Exoneration Didn't End Nightmare; First Death Row
Inmate Cleared by DNA Pours Emotions Into Activism

  BYLINE: Susan Levine, Washington Post Staff Writer

  DATELINE: CAMBRIDGE, Md.

  The dream still haunts him, still grabs him in the night and drags
him down the long hallway toward his death. He always fights back,
kicking at the faceless guards forcing him on, but there is no
escape. The metal-studded gas chamber looms. Its vents start to hiss.
Straps tighten around him.

  And then, right before the final freeze frame, Kirk Bloodsworth
wakes up. Drenched in terror, choking to breathe.

  He was just 24 years old, with neither criminal history nor deviant
past, when a Baltimore County judge ordered his execution for
brutally raping and murdering a girl in 1984. He didn't do it,
Bloodsworth told the judge and jury. He didn't do it, he told the
hundreds of people he wrote relentlessly from prison -- everyone from
President Ronald Reagan to singer Willie Nelson to Joseph Wambaugh,
the best-selling crime novelist. He signed every letter A.I.M. -- his
acronym for "an innocent man."

  After eight years, 11 months and 19 days behind bars, the State of
Maryland agreed. Scientific testing that was only fiction at the time
of the killing had advanced enough to confirm that a slim stain of
semen on the girl's panties was not Bloodsworth's. His exoneration
conferred instant celebrity: Never before in the United States had
DNA cleared someone who had sat on death row.

  The Eastern Shore waterman and former Marine was released to a
stretch limousine and the rest of his life. Given what he had been
through, he figured, the rest of his life should be easy.

  A decade later, he knows better.

  "It's a daily struggle," Bloodsworth says. "You're fighting with the
fact you went through this."

  For the longest time, he wouldn't talk about the past. Ignoring it
was the way to move on. But these days, his is one of the most
prominent voices within the small, exclusive club of death-row
exonerees.
...

LH