Innocent and Still Shunned

My senior year of college one of my professors asked me if I would like to help him with something. Intrigued and curious, I agreed to meet him for coffee to learn all about a project he was working on. My professor was working alongside a lawyer that helped people involved in the prison system. Both of them took cases that represented prisoners that had been wrongly convicted or that were being abused in some way or another. I was ashamed that I had never thought about what happens to an inmate that was not being treated in a humane fashion (which probably happens more than I would like to think). I spent that whole year learning about the legal system and how hard it was to represent a population that people constantly ignored.

Image Credit: Detention Ministry

One of the cases we worked involved a man that was wrongly accused of murder when he was fourteen years old. He was arrested on one person’s account of the description of the culprit. A person, apparently of this boy’s height and build, went into a local corner store to rob it. The robber set the store on fire after he robbed it and the owner’s son was unknowingly inside. The son died in the fire and our client was arrested the next day. We were working with him 25 years later, when the use of DNA was available and trying to use it to our benefit. This man was one of the most resilient people I have ever met. Yes, he was mad at his situation and upset he had spent all these wasted years in jail. But, he never gave up. We were his fourth or fifth team of lawyers he had used and he still wasn’t giving up. Long story short, DNA was recovered and the crime solved. The white store owner decided to burn his store down to receive the insurance money. He was having money troubles and decided this would be the best decision for his situation. In this process, he killed his son and sent an innocent man to jail.

Working with people who have been wrongly accused of crimes took away my naivety towards the justice system. There is no justice at all for these people. Some of them fit a mold and are immediately arrested. I know that all the people we worked with had at least two characteristics in common. They were all African American and they were all poor.

When our client was released from jail, after 25 years, he was “awarded” $1,250,000. What a slap in the face. This man had no idea what a Starbucks was, did not know how popular computers were, and did not know some of his friends had passed away. But, all of this out the window, the way he was treated when he got out of jail was horrible. He still had to put on job applications that he went to jail. This caused him not to get a call back or an interview for the job. We finally had to get help from the Innocence Project to find him a job and get his fictional criminal record expunged. 

Image Credit: Innocence Project

I know he is one of thousands of people that have been in this situation. He was innocent and treated horribly because people found out that he was in jail. Why are prisoners, after serving their sentence and getting released, so stigmatized and shunned from society? Don’t they deserve a chance to return to society and try to make their life better?

A professor at the University of Virginia Law School, Brandon L. Garrett, wrote a book about this very thing. In Convicting the Innocent, Garrett writes about how many cases of wrongly convicted people were overturned when DNA came on the scene. In an article from the New York Times, Garrett talks about his book and the statistics behind the wrongly accused. The writer says, “Of those exonerated by DNA, 70 percent were from minorities, and in nearly half of the rape cases involving blacks or Hispanics, the victims were white. Garrett criticizes the Supreme Court for allowing lineups that were unfairly conducted, and says the best way to avoid erroneous identifications is to use a ­double-blind procedure where police officers can’t influence the witness because they don’t know which person in the lineup is the suspect.”

So after you live innocently in jail for many years how does one return to society and try to make the most out of their life? Some of these people receive money for their time lost, but others do not. But, does money really make up for all those years lost? 

In an article by Fernanda Santos, “Putting a Price of Wrongful Conviction,” she says what the wrongly accused have to live with when they return to society. She refers to certain states and what they give people who have been exonerated. A Florida State Representative said, “I believe the taxpayer would be horribly offended if their money were to be spent compensating an exonerated prisoner who has a history of serious crimes.” But, these people are innocent. Why does our society have such a negative view on jails and inmates? Why do we build more jails than schools? And why do we not help these people and stop the cycle of going to jail? A forensic economist was also interviewed for this article. He believes the wrongly convicted might suffer a loss greater than death. He states,” Your earnings are going to be impaired forever, your social interactions are going to be impaired forever. It’s like being thrown into a time warp.” Only three states provide medical and physiological care when the innocent get out of jail. These are people that never committed the crimes they were jailed for, and we do not treat them like humans. People that actually do commit crimes are ignored and set aside. We have the ability to possibly help these people with a second chance. A chance to do better in society and be recognized as human beings. 

Links to get more information about the issues brought forth:

All about what the Innocence Project is actually doing and stories about people they have helped get out of prison.

Closer to home- The website from the Innocence Institute right in Pittsburgh, from Point Park University. Gives information from compensatory methods to how the justice system gets away with wrongful convictions.

An article in the "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette" about a project to study wrongful convictions in Pittsburgh. The team to head up this project include government officials, lawyers, a priest, and even an exonerated death row inmate.