Our criminal justice system is made up of the police, courts, and corrections. The police issue citations or make arrests where applicable and those arrested are given due process. They are brought to court where they can be tried by a jury or a judge who decides what the punishments will be.

If the arrestee is found guilty by the courts and the punishment determined is a jail term, then the culprit gets to do time for being found guilty of a criminal offense. The public often understands that you do the crime, you do time.

However, all across America, there has been a staggering number of citizens arrested, tried by the courts and sent to jail for something they never did. So, how is it that it is not uncommon to not do the crime, but you have to do time?

  American citizens have been increasingly incarcerated for crimes they never committed. They spend large chunks of their lives behind bars for something they did not do, and it is hard to believe that even after being found innocent and set free, the wrongfully convicted are never indeed set free because the baggage of prison time follows them everywhere they go.

  It is even harder to get a job once you are released from prison because you have spent a lot of time locked up in one location while the world outside of you keeps changing fast. A lot of freed prisoners come out of jail, and they have to learn to use the internet to make job applications.

 They will now need a digital resume, distinct from one on paper that used to obtain before they were locked up. There are no more pay phones, and very few landlines exist so they may have to purchase a cell phone. These and more render them almost useless to society immediately because they have to start life all over again.

 Richard Miles of Dallas Texas is one of those freed not on DNA evidence but because exculpatory evidence was withheld from his attorney. He is doing ok. Asked what he went to jail for, his response was, “I am innocent.”

  Those freed based on DNA evidence along with Mr. Miles spend on average more than 14 years behind bars according to the Innocence Project. The pain and grief of life in prison exacerbated by the total loss of freedom, locked away for years away from friends and family gets only worse after release that provides no apology, compensation or rehabilitation.

  Even though these people have been proven innocent and cleared of all wrongdoing, with nothing to start their new life, their punishment continues unabated, many years after their release and reentry into society.

While 29 states and the District of Columbia have compensation laws, many are inadequate regarding getting them back on their feet. Texas’ is, however, one of the best and it is tempting to believe it is because we have the most exonerees.

The number of wrongfully convicted has been on the rise for quite some time now. In the 2016 year, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, there were 166 people freed nationwide, who had been convicted of crimes they did not commit.

To be locked up for a crime you did not commit is one thing. But after the wrongfully convicted are freed, they face a multitude of challenges ranging from lack of jobs to housing and health insurance. Which is why while exonerees look to restart their lives upon reentry into society, they eagerly look forward to some financial compensation to give them some cushion as they rebuild their lives.

 Jimmie C. Gardner spent 26 years, of a 110-year sentence in a West Virginia prison, all the time fending off aggressive inmates in a bid to remain alive. Prison is a different world where fights often break out. But after he was released last year, he was faced with another conflict. Now out of prison, he had to fight to get compensation for doing time when he did no crime.

  It is incredible how Gardner was not a bitter man at all after he was set free. How do people spend decades behind bars for crimes they did not commit and come out smiling?

  Here in Texas, it took six letters to the Dallas County court, for an exoneree seeking post-conviction DNA testing that will clear him for the crime he did not commit but had spent 25 years in prison. That was one of his fights in jail. Once out, he had also to fight to get compensated, and that will take some more years.

 Johnnie Lindsey spent 26 years in a Texas State Penitentiary for no crime, but after his release, he expected every penny for every minute spent behind bars. That was not to happen without a fight.

  After a protracted legal battle, he won, and that decision paved the way to free up compensation for two other exonerees with circumstances not different from his. A testament to the fact that there is a second battle to be fought after prison time.

Dallas has been home to more than 40 exonerees.  For most of these, a common thread runs through. Most of them fit the same type of description. Black and male.

  Richard Miles of Dallas spent 15 years in prison. He was sentenced to 60 years for murder and attempted murder at 19 years of age. In an interview, he explained how it took him two and a half years to win complete exoneration and get compensated.

“What happens to a person accused falsely, then intentionally and wrongfully found guilty and locked up in a dangerous prison for something he did not do? How do you sleep at night, eat a meal given to you, you may not like, told when to go to bed, when to shower and what clothes to wear?” Miles asked.

One of his attorneys was professor and director of innovative education at UNT Dallas College of Law, Cheryl Wattley, winner of Oklahoma Book Award. Wattley, an opponent of the death penalty wonders why the notion of “if my son is not living, why should yours be,” still pervades our society, an apparent reference to Americans’ preference for the death penalty.

 

 Mr. Miles is using his $1 million restitution, paid in lump sum and his monthly stipend of $5,900 to help those in similar circumstances such as his. He is plowing back this money in his non-profit organization, Miles of Freedom to help exonerees get settled down and find jobs.

  It has mainly been the freed and compensated who have taken upon themselves to use what was given them rightfully, to help others who have suffered the same fate. 

To date, the state of Texas has paid 101 men and women a total of $93 million in a 25-year period for wrongfully sending people to prison. A definite waste of taxpayers’ money when the courts should have had it right the first time. To err is human but to have 58 people wrongfully convicted freed in Texas last year is shocking would you not say? I am just saying.

  In some of these cases, eyewitness misidentification has been responsible for sending these men to prison as in the case of Kirk  Noble Bloodsworth in the state of Georgia.

The police sometimes also pressure suspects into owning crimes they did not commit.One such case was regarding the “Dixmoor Five” and “Englewood Four,” accused of rape based on false confessions.

 Regardless of the year and the time, the media has made it its business to take human rights abuses seriously and as such included it in its agenda every stretch of the way. Millions of people depend on news producers for information to navigate their lives.

The theory of Agenda-setting, which is the media’s selection of what to report and how it is reported has been well manifested in the coverage of American exonerees as more and more people get released from prison saying, I didn’t do it.

  In 2016, African Americans, who constitute only 13 percent of the American population make up the majority of the innocent defendants. They are 47 percent of the 19,000 exonerees accounted for in the National Registry of Exonerees.

  That Dallas had the most exonerees can be explained by the fact that the Dallas county chief law enforcement officer, the district attorney from 2007 to 2015 in the person of Craig Watkins was a black man.

 He was fortunate to have met evidence dating back two decades saved at the time he took office.

 Most of these exonerees are men who have been convicted of murder and sexual assault. Since 1989, 1,362 unjustly imprisoned people nationwide have been released. 

 Exonerees often find it hard to find work because their record may not be wiped out. Some cannot endure the pressure of an abrupt entrance into a world different from how they left it before they went to prison.

 Since the death penalty, which is still on the books in most states is now sparingly used, putting so-called criminals away for long periods of time, have been the norm in states such as Texas and Oklahoma.

Long prison terms are now given preference because it is viewed as a death sentence, without an execution date.

 Not all of these cases leading to freedom are as a result of DNA technology. Rightly, a lot of them were heard, and judgments were given before the advent of DNA technology, and it made an enormous difference. However, had the evidence not been saved over that period, some for over two decades, there would have been nothing to test.

So, evidence in all cases, especially ones where people are put away for a long time, should be kept for an extended period of time. How long? Dallas’ Craig Watkins suggests, if you are sent to prison for ten years, your evidence should be stored for 20 years. Twice as long.

Cases that were overturned not because of DNA evidence were due for the most part to prosecutorial misconduct such as withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense.

As for eyewitness evidence, that should be given little credence because most of the eyewitnesses in these cases recanted their stories.

Last year, seven inmates in Texas were put to death. In 2017, eight were scheduled to be killed, but only seven have been fulfilled. As we come to the close of the year, it is hoped that that number will remain seven suggesting that the business of putting our kind to sleep in Texas has plateaued. And that’s a vast improvement. Way to go Texas! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

 

PS:  “Bobby” on the British policeman’s photo is a nickname. The genesis of modern policing is rooted in Pre-Victorian England. It was Sir Robert Peel, Home Secretary from 1778-1850 who created London’s systemized police force (The Metropolitan police). Bob is the short form for Robert, and the Brits gave his name to these group of men he so well organized-Bobbies.