The Innocents
I was at the library recently, and just by chance I came upon the book, "The Innocents," which is a book and museum exhibit that showcases the stories of people who have been wrongfully imprisoned and exonerated from violent crimes by new DNA evidence. The stories range from the absurd- as in the case of one man who was held for 2 more years after a new DNA test showed that he couldn't have been the source of a seminal contribution in a rape case, to the simply tragic. Each page shows a picture of the exonerated person in a setting that is important to the case, or to the exonerated person. Near the end of the book, readers come upon a page that simply shows a mobile home set in the woods. I found myself searching the windows and looking into the woods that framed the picture of the person, only to come upon a note that says that the former prisoner died in a fall just 6 months after he was released from prison. One of the great tragic ironies was that if he had still been in jail, he could possibly be alive today.
The book also contained statements from each freed person, and many held great wisdom, even as they also showed desperation and a sense of hopelessness. One might assume that someone who is exonerated after spending 10 or so years in jail for a crime they didn't committ would feel a sense of liberation and fervor for life on the outside, but many said that they sometimes wanted to be back in jail. They longed for the secruity of knowing what was going to happen, they couldn't let go of the idea that someone might accuse them of something else again, they had to justify to potential employers why they didn't work for ten years, and even had to put on their application that they were incarcerated, even though now considered fully free.
One has to question, when 159 people to date have been freed by the Innocence Project (and others by other similar groups) how many people (also sadly the wrongfully accused are most often minorities) are still sitting in jail innocent, with no potential DNA evidence to exonerate them. I think they said that 21 of their cases were men freed from death row. How many people have been executed who could now be proven innocent. Many states that have allowed DNA evidence to prove guilt in crimes have refused to allow testing to be done to disprove the guilt of prisoners for years- even when families or other people are willing to pay the cost of testing. Thankfully, law students and other people have begun to take notice of these injustices and begun work to reverse these injustices.
One more absurdity, on man, after appealing his original case, had his sentence reduced from 3,220 years to 3,120 years. Thats so much better.
www.innocenceproject.org
I was at the library recently, and just by chance I came upon the book, "The Innocents," which is a book and museum exhibit that showcases the stories of people who have been wrongfully imprisoned and exonerated from violent crimes by new DNA evidence. The stories range from the absurd- as in the case of one man who was held for 2 more years after a new DNA test showed that he couldn't have been the source of a seminal contribution in a rape case, to the simply tragic. Each page shows a picture of the exonerated person in a setting that is important to the case, or to the exonerated person. Near the end of the book, readers come upon a page that simply shows a mobile home set in the woods. I found myself searching the windows and looking into the woods that framed the picture of the person, only to come upon a note that says that the former prisoner died in a fall just 6 months after he was released from prison. One of the great tragic ironies was that if he had still been in jail, he could possibly be alive today.
The book also contained statements from each freed person, and many held great wisdom, even as they also showed desperation and a sense of hopelessness. One might assume that someone who is exonerated after spending 10 or so years in jail for a crime they didn't committ would feel a sense of liberation and fervor for life on the outside, but many said that they sometimes wanted to be back in jail. They longed for the secruity of knowing what was going to happen, they couldn't let go of the idea that someone might accuse them of something else again, they had to justify to potential employers why they didn't work for ten years, and even had to put on their application that they were incarcerated, even though now considered fully free.
One has to question, when 159 people to date have been freed by the Innocence Project (and others by other similar groups) how many people (also sadly the wrongfully accused are most often minorities) are still sitting in jail innocent, with no potential DNA evidence to exonerate them. I think they said that 21 of their cases were men freed from death row. How many people have been executed who could now be proven innocent. Many states that have allowed DNA evidence to prove guilt in crimes have refused to allow testing to be done to disprove the guilt of prisoners for years- even when families or other people are willing to pay the cost of testing. Thankfully, law students and other people have begun to take notice of these injustices and begun work to reverse these injustices.
One more absurdity, on man, after appealing his original case, had his sentence reduced from 3,220 years to 3,120 years. Thats so much better.
www.innocenceproject.org
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