KConnor56
07-12-2002, 04:16 AM
By Sharon Cohen, Deborah Hastings, AP National Writers.
For 110 freed by DNA tests, the scars remain
For 110 inmates freed by DNA tests, true freedom
remains elusive
Their time in prison surpassed 1,000 years, and all
were wrongly convicted. Then they returned to lives
that had passed them by.
An Associated Press examination of what happened to 110
inmates after their convictions were overturned by DNA
tests found that, for many of the men, vindication
brought neither a happy ending nor a happy beginning.
"It destroyed my family," says Vincent Moto, unjustly
convicted of rape and imprisoned for 10 1/2 years in
Pennsylvania. "It cost me over $100,000 to get
exonerated. That was my mom and dad's money to retire.
They're struggling. I'm struggling." Moto, a 39-year-
old father of four, says his kids suffered
psychologically and he still has nightmares of prison.
He survives on odd jobs, welfare and food stamps. "I
have to live with these scars all my life," he says.
Richard Danziger is even less fortunate. Wrongly
convicted of rape and sentenced to life, he suffered
permanent brain damage when his head was bashed in by
another inmate. Danziger was released in 2001 after he
served 11 years in Texas. Now, at age 31, he lives with
his sister, Barbara Oakley. "He basically gets up,
watches TV, goes to the park, and that's the extent of
his day," she says.
Lesly Jean, a 42-year-old former Marine imprisoned in
North Carolina for a rape he did not commit, struggles
to rebuild his life.
"You know that old saying, 'When someone knocks you
down, you need to get back up'? Well," he says,
"sometimes it's not that simple to get back up."
That's especially true when the released men find
themselves in a new world where they carry few up-to-
date job skills, limited education, and heavy, if not
bitter, hearts. For many, being set free doesn't mean
freedom.
In reviewing the cases of the 110, all men, the AP
found:
- About half had no prior adult convictions, according
to legal records and the inmates' attorneys. While some
were picked up for questioning because they were known
to police, many had never been in trouble before.
- Eleven of the men served time on death row; two came
within days of execution.
- Slightly more than a third have received
compensation, mainly through state claims. Some have
received settlements from civil lawsuits or special
legislative bills. For others, claims or suits are
pending; and some had lawsuits thrown out or haven't
decided whether to seek money.
- The men averaged 10 1/2 years behind bars. The
shortest wrongful incarceration was one year; the
longest, 22 years. Altogether, the 110 men spent 1,149
years in prison.
- Their imprisonment came during critical wage-earning
years when careers and families are built. The average
age when they entered prison was 28. At release, it was
38.
- Their convictions follow certain patterns. Nearly
two-thirds were convicted with mistaken testimony from
victims and eyewitnesses. About 14 percent were
imprisoned after mistakes or alleged misconduct by
forensics experts. Nine were mentally retarded or
borderline retarded and confessed, they said, after
being tricked or coerced by authorities.
Finally freed - by determined lawyers or their own
perseverance - the men were dumped back into society as
abruptly as they were plucked out. Often, they were not
entitled to the help, such as parole officers, given to
those rightfully convicted.
"The people who come out of this are often very, very
severely damaged human beings who often don't ever
fully recover," says Rob Warden, executive director of
Northwestern University School of Law's Center on
Wrongful Convictions. "Lightning strikes, they come
out," he says, "and they're in bad, bad shape."
They represent many walks of life - a homeless
panhandler, a therapist, a junkie, a mushroom picker, a
handyman, a crab fisherman - but almost all were
working-class or poor.
Of the cases reviewed by the AP, about two-thirds
involved black or Hispanic inmates, roughly reflecting
state prison populations' racial makeup.
"All of these people have a certain vulnerability. It
may be race, class, mental health issues or personality
problems," says Peter Neufeld, who co-founded The
Innocence Project with attorney Barry Scheck at the
Cardozo School of Law in New York. About 60 percent of
the men were helped by the 10-year-old legal assistance
program, the rest by other groups or private lawyers.
The first DNA releases came in 1989, according to the
Innocence Project. "They sort of get caught in this
Kafkaesque vortex," Neufeld adds, "and the rest is
history."
Jeffrey Todd Pierce, for example. He had never been
convicted of a crime when at age 24, he was found
guilty of rape. Oklahoma City Police Department chemist
Joyce Gilchrist testified that hair found at the scene
matched Pierce's, an analysis the FBI would conclude -
15 years later - was just plain wrong.
Pierce's wife divorced him and his twin sons, now 16,
grew up without him. After Pierce was released last
year, he reunited with his family in Michigan, though
he can't bring himself to remarry.
"Prison made me look after myself, and I don't want to
commit to anything that can be taken away from me at an
instant," he says.
Or consider David Vasquez of Virginia. The 55-year-old
man was mistakenly identified by a witness who said he
was lurking outside the home of a woman later found
raped and murdered. Vasquez, who is borderline
retarded, confessed. Four years after his conviction,
DNA testing identified the real killer, a serial
rapist. "They destroyed his life and mine," says
Vasquez's mother, Imelda Shapiro. "My life stopped in
1984. My son and I just sit in this house." Shapiro
begins to weep. "We can't afford to go out, and I'm
afraid to go out." Her son bags groceries part time.
"That's about as much as he can handle," she says. They
live on his wages and $825 a month she secured through
a special dispensation from the state.
For many exonerated men, re-entering society is
baffling. There are so many changes - PIN codes, the
Internet, wireless communication. "Everything was a lot
faster than it was when I went in," says Ronnie
Bullock, 46, who spent a decade in an Illinois prison
before being cleared of rape in 1994. "Pagers, cell
phones, camcorders - even going to the grocery stores
was different."
So, too, was freedom.
After Kevin Green was released, he bought a cell phone
and a pager so his family could keep track of him at
every moment - just to allay their fears.
Charles Fain struggled to stop pacing five steps
forward, then five steps back - the dimensions of his
cell.
A team of AP reporters identified 110 cases through
late May in which convictions were overturned because
of DNA testing. Many other cases were pending. Most of
the 110 men had been convicted of rape; 24 were found
guilty of rape and murder, six of murder only. In
criminal cases, the evidence most often tested for
genetic identification is bodily fluids, which explains
the high number of rape convictions overturned.
Legal experts differ on who these men represent.
Neufeld says they're the tip of the iceberg.
>From the late 1980s to the mid '90s, before state and
local police had their own labs for DNA testing, they
sent the evidence to the FBI for analysis, he says. The
results? The prime suspect turned out not to be a match
in about 2,000 of 8,000 cases where there was enough
material for testing, he says. Errors that lead to
wrongful convictions also occur in cases where there's
no DNA to test, he says. "Is there any reason that a
witness would be less likely to be mistaken in a
robbery than a rape? "What this does tell you is we're
not talking about a handful of innocent people" in
prison, he adds. "We're clearly talking about
thousands."
Historically, of course, convictions have been
overturned for many reasons, not just genetic testing;
in fact, 11 people exonerated through the Innocence
Project Northwest in Seattle had cases that did not
turn on DNA results.
But John Wilson, who heads a state crime lab in
Missouri and has testified as a DNA expert in criminal
trials, doubts Neufeld's point. He also says more
widely available DNA testing has made wrongful
convictions less likely in recent years. "The fact is,
the majority of the time, the cops are right. It is the
right guy," Wilson says.
Some of the men whose cases the AP looked into had
criminal pasts - no fewer than seven had prior
convictions for sex crimes. In addition, 11 who were
freed have been convicted of new crimes and nine of
those have been sentenced to prison.
Kerry Kotler was exonerated of rape in 1992 in New
York. Five years later, he was convicted of sexual
assault. This time, DNA helped convict him.
Though genetic testing helped Albert Wesley Brown win
release from an Oklahoma prison last year, he now
admits he was guilty of the murder of a 67-year-old
man. A crime-scene hair sample that had been used as
evidence against him at trial wasn't his, a DNA test
later showed. But as prosecutors prepared to retry him
without this mistaken evidence, he pleaded guilty. "I
took him to the lake and drowned him and left him,"
Brown said in court last month. The plea was in
exchange for a sentence of time served, 18 years.
At the other end of the spectrum, some of the freed men
have been remarkably successful.
Mark Bravo recently graduated with honors from a
California law school and plans to start a foundation
for people who get caught up in similar predicaments.
Anthony Robinson just finished his first year as a law
student in Texas. Timothy Durham helps run his family's
electronics store in Oklahoma. Edward Honaker has
published two novels - both written in a Virginia
prison. "The thing about it is, you can't let your
incarceration defeat you," Honaker says. "And you can't
let it dictate the rest of your life."
Death has claimed four of the men. Two died of cancer,
one while in prison, and the other six months after his
release.
Leonard Callace of New York died from a heroin overdose
four years after he was freed. "When he got out, he was
never able to put it in back of him," says brother
Pierre Callace.
Kenneth Waters enjoyed freedom for just a matter of
months. His sister, Betty Anne, had only a high school
equivalency diploma but put herself through law school
to help win his release. In March 2001, after 18 years
behind bars for a murder and armed robbery he hadn't
committed, Waters was released. He had contracted
hepatitis C in prison, apparently from dental work. But
that did not kill him.
Last September while taking a shortcut to his brother's
Massachusetts home, Waters fell from a 15-foot wall. He
fractured his skull and died. "It's hard," Betty Anne
Waters said at the time. "But we look at it as six
months of freedom is better than 20 years in jail."
The pace of exonerations is quickening, keeping up with
the availability of genetic testing. The Innocence
Project reported 23 men were cleared last year by DNA,
compared with six in 1992.
That increase has prompted much legislation giving
inmates access to DNA testing to challenge their
convictions. Twenty-five states now have such laws, all
but two passed in the last three years, says Nina
Morrison, the Innocence Project's executive director.
But some new laws have restrictions that she considers
unreasonable - such as a one-year period for inmates to
seek DNA testing. That's not enough time to assemble a
case, she says.
Meanwhile, the number of inmates begging for genetic
analysis grows. The Innocence Project says it has 4,000
cases at some stage of investigation.
The biggest problem, Neufeld says, is the race against
time. In three-quarters of the Innocence Project's
cases, physical evidence such as hair or blood has been
lost, misplaced or destroyed. During a criminal trial,
the disappearance of evidence can mean acquittal. After
conviction, it can mean losing all chances to prove
one's innocence.
When lawyers for Marvin Anderson wanted DNA analysis in
1993, they were told the evidence against him had been
destroyed. But a swab containing genetic material was
later found, taped to the inside of a lab technician's
notebook. It proved Anderson was not guilty - though
not everyone was convinced. "Some people look at me
like I'm guilty," he says. "It's hard finding a job. No
one hires a person convicted of rape."
Five years after his exoneration, Anderson is a
trucker, scraping by on $200 to $400 a week. He faces
the hardest task of the men able to work - earning a
living wage.
Others say they cannot work because of post-traumatic
stress syndrome, depression or physical handicaps.
Of 29 men who told the AP their income, the average
weekly earnings were $438. If "all that's on your
resume is a blank, or state prison for the last 10, 15
years, there's not exactly a bunch of people out there
willing to hire you for other than minimum-wage jobs,"
says Randy Schaffer, a Houston lawyer who represented
three exonerated Texas men.
Steven Toney, a shuttle bus driver in Missouri, earns
slightly more than minimum wage. He says he has
struggled to get beyond menial jobs, but suspects his
past has been held against him by prospective
employers. "How many are going to come out and say,
'I'm not hiring you because you were incarcerated'?" he
asks. "But I don't get the call."
When Eduardo Velazquez looks for work, he carries a
newspaper photo of himself taken the day of his
release. After 13 years in a Massachusetts prison, he
wants to prove he did nothing wrong. Still, says the
35-year-old man, no one will hire him.
Ronald Williamson came within five days of being
executed for a murder and rape. After 11 years in
prison, his bipolar disease degenerated to hearing
voices and psychotic episodes. Today, the former minor-
league ballplayer's best chance for a job is an
application he recently submitted to a cafeteria.
The families of these men also suffer.
Moto, the Pennsylvania man, recalls how his children
would grab his legs as they ended their prison visits
and plead to the guards, '"Let my daddy go!"'
Some families remain together, others are ripped apart.
Steve Linscott was convicted of murdering a young woman
in suburban Chicago. Then a college Bible student
managing a Christian halfway house with his wife, he
told police about a strange dream he had, which in some
ways was similar to the attack. The police considered
it a confession. He ended up going to prison for more
than three years. Linscott's wife and children moved to
southern Illinois, near the penitentiary, and waited
for him. Now a therapist for emotionally disturbed
children, he is working on his second master's degree.
Ben Salazar was married to his childhood sweetheart,
Christina. After four years of bringing their three
children to a Texas prison visiting room, she couldn't
cope anymore. Salazar couldn't stand to see her suffer.
"I told her, 'You do what you have to do.' And she went
on with her life. She filed for divorce. It was hard
for me to say that ... We grew up together." Now 36, he
is engaged to someone else.
Billy Wardell, 37, has a wife, a 2-year-old daughter, a
house and a job as a machinist - every single thing he
dreamed of during 11 years in an Illinois prison. And
yet something is missing. "There's a big gap that makes
me wonder ... all the things I could have been and
could have done," he says. "Now there's just a big
piece of time that's gone."
Ronald Cotton Jr. faces the future by looking,
unflinchingly, at his past. Jennifer Thompson is the
rape victim whose mistaken identification put him in
prison for 10 years. He has become her friend.
Together, they give speeches. She lobbied to change
laws so Cotton would be entitled to more than the
$5,000 North Carolina originally offered as
compensation. He received nearly $110,000. After
becoming a free man in 1995, Cotton bought some land,
got married, fathered a child and found work as a
machine operator.
Still, he is haunted. "I know if it happened once," he
says, "it can happen again."
By Sharon Cohen, Deborah Hastings, AP national writers.
For 110 freed by DNA tests, the scars remain
For 110 inmates freed by DNA tests, true freedom
remains elusive
Their time in prison surpassed 1,000 years, and all
were wrongly convicted. Then they returned to lives
that had passed them by.
An Associated Press examination of what happened to 110
inmates after their convictions were overturned by DNA
tests found that, for many of the men, vindication
brought neither a happy ending nor a happy beginning.
"It destroyed my family," says Vincent Moto, unjustly
convicted of rape and imprisoned for 10 1/2 years in
Pennsylvania. "It cost me over $100,000 to get
exonerated. That was my mom and dad's money to retire.
They're struggling. I'm struggling." Moto, a 39-year-
old father of four, says his kids suffered
psychologically and he still has nightmares of prison.
He survives on odd jobs, welfare and food stamps. "I
have to live with these scars all my life," he says.
Richard Danziger is even less fortunate. Wrongly
convicted of rape and sentenced to life, he suffered
permanent brain damage when his head was bashed in by
another inmate. Danziger was released in 2001 after he
served 11 years in Texas. Now, at age 31, he lives with
his sister, Barbara Oakley. "He basically gets up,
watches TV, goes to the park, and that's the extent of
his day," she says.
Lesly Jean, a 42-year-old former Marine imprisoned in
North Carolina for a rape he did not commit, struggles
to rebuild his life.
"You know that old saying, 'When someone knocks you
down, you need to get back up'? Well," he says,
"sometimes it's not that simple to get back up."
That's especially true when the released men find
themselves in a new world where they carry few up-to-
date job skills, limited education, and heavy, if not
bitter, hearts. For many, being set free doesn't mean
freedom.
In reviewing the cases of the 110, all men, the AP
found:
- About half had no prior adult convictions, according
to legal records and the inmates' attorneys. While some
were picked up for questioning because they were known
to police, many had never been in trouble before.
- Eleven of the men served time on death row; two came
within days of execution.
- Slightly more than a third have received
compensation, mainly through state claims. Some have
received settlements from civil lawsuits or special
legislative bills. For others, claims or suits are
pending; and some had lawsuits thrown out or haven't
decided whether to seek money.
- The men averaged 10 1/2 years behind bars. The
shortest wrongful incarceration was one year; the
longest, 22 years. Altogether, the 110 men spent 1,149
years in prison.
- Their imprisonment came during critical wage-earning
years when careers and families are built. The average
age when they entered prison was 28. At release, it was
38.
- Their convictions follow certain patterns. Nearly
two-thirds were convicted with mistaken testimony from
victims and eyewitnesses. About 14 percent were
imprisoned after mistakes or alleged misconduct by
forensics experts. Nine were mentally retarded or
borderline retarded and confessed, they said, after
being tricked or coerced by authorities.
Finally freed - by determined lawyers or their own
perseverance - the men were dumped back into society as
abruptly as they were plucked out. Often, they were not
entitled to the help, such as parole officers, given to
those rightfully convicted.
"The people who come out of this are often very, very
severely damaged human beings who often don't ever
fully recover," says Rob Warden, executive director of
Northwestern University School of Law's Center on
Wrongful Convictions. "Lightning strikes, they come
out," he says, "and they're in bad, bad shape."
They represent many walks of life - a homeless
panhandler, a therapist, a junkie, a mushroom picker, a
handyman, a crab fisherman - but almost all were
working-class or poor.
Of the cases reviewed by the AP, about two-thirds
involved black or Hispanic inmates, roughly reflecting
state prison populations' racial makeup.
"All of these people have a certain vulnerability. It
may be race, class, mental health issues or personality
problems," says Peter Neufeld, who co-founded The
Innocence Project with attorney Barry Scheck at the
Cardozo School of Law in New York. About 60 percent of
the men were helped by the 10-year-old legal assistance
program, the rest by other groups or private lawyers.
The first DNA releases came in 1989, according to the
Innocence Project. "They sort of get caught in this
Kafkaesque vortex," Neufeld adds, "and the rest is
history."
Jeffrey Todd Pierce, for example. He had never been
convicted of a crime when at age 24, he was found
guilty of rape. Oklahoma City Police Department chemist
Joyce Gilchrist testified that hair found at the scene
matched Pierce's, an analysis the FBI would conclude -
15 years later - was just plain wrong.
Pierce's wife divorced him and his twin sons, now 16,
grew up without him. After Pierce was released last
year, he reunited with his family in Michigan, though
he can't bring himself to remarry.
"Prison made me look after myself, and I don't want to
commit to anything that can be taken away from me at an
instant," he says.
Or consider David Vasquez of Virginia. The 55-year-old
man was mistakenly identified by a witness who said he
was lurking outside the home of a woman later found
raped and murdered. Vasquez, who is borderline
retarded, confessed. Four years after his conviction,
DNA testing identified the real killer, a serial
rapist. "They destroyed his life and mine," says
Vasquez's mother, Imelda Shapiro. "My life stopped in
1984. My son and I just sit in this house." Shapiro
begins to weep. "We can't afford to go out, and I'm
afraid to go out." Her son bags groceries part time.
"That's about as much as he can handle," she says. They
live on his wages and $825 a month she secured through
a special dispensation from the state.
For many exonerated men, re-entering society is
baffling. There are so many changes - PIN codes, the
Internet, wireless communication. "Everything was a lot
faster than it was when I went in," says Ronnie
Bullock, 46, who spent a decade in an Illinois prison
before being cleared of rape in 1994. "Pagers, cell
phones, camcorders - even going to the grocery stores
was different."
So, too, was freedom.
After Kevin Green was released, he bought a cell phone
and a pager so his family could keep track of him at
every moment - just to allay their fears.
Charles Fain struggled to stop pacing five steps
forward, then five steps back - the dimensions of his
cell.
A team of AP reporters identified 110 cases through
late May in which convictions were overturned because
of DNA testing. Many other cases were pending. Most of
the 110 men had been convicted of rape; 24 were found
guilty of rape and murder, six of murder only. In
criminal cases, the evidence most often tested for
genetic identification is bodily fluids, which explains
the high number of rape convictions overturned.
Legal experts differ on who these men represent.
Neufeld says they're the tip of the iceberg.
>From the late 1980s to the mid '90s, before state and
local police had their own labs for DNA testing, they
sent the evidence to the FBI for analysis, he says. The
results? The prime suspect turned out not to be a match
in about 2,000 of 8,000 cases where there was enough
material for testing, he says. Errors that lead to
wrongful convictions also occur in cases where there's
no DNA to test, he says. "Is there any reason that a
witness would be less likely to be mistaken in a
robbery than a rape? "What this does tell you is we're
not talking about a handful of innocent people" in
prison, he adds. "We're clearly talking about
thousands."
Historically, of course, convictions have been
overturned for many reasons, not just genetic testing;
in fact, 11 people exonerated through the Innocence
Project Northwest in Seattle had cases that did not
turn on DNA results.
But John Wilson, who heads a state crime lab in
Missouri and has testified as a DNA expert in criminal
trials, doubts Neufeld's point. He also says more
widely available DNA testing has made wrongful
convictions less likely in recent years. "The fact is,
the majority of the time, the cops are right. It is the
right guy," Wilson says.
Some of the men whose cases the AP looked into had
criminal pasts - no fewer than seven had prior
convictions for sex crimes. In addition, 11 who were
freed have been convicted of new crimes and nine of
those have been sentenced to prison.
Kerry Kotler was exonerated of rape in 1992 in New
York. Five years later, he was convicted of sexual
assault. This time, DNA helped convict him.
Though genetic testing helped Albert Wesley Brown win
release from an Oklahoma prison last year, he now
admits he was guilty of the murder of a 67-year-old
man. A crime-scene hair sample that had been used as
evidence against him at trial wasn't his, a DNA test
later showed. But as prosecutors prepared to retry him
without this mistaken evidence, he pleaded guilty. "I
took him to the lake and drowned him and left him,"
Brown said in court last month. The plea was in
exchange for a sentence of time served, 18 years.
At the other end of the spectrum, some of the freed men
have been remarkably successful.
Mark Bravo recently graduated with honors from a
California law school and plans to start a foundation
for people who get caught up in similar predicaments.
Anthony Robinson just finished his first year as a law
student in Texas. Timothy Durham helps run his family's
electronics store in Oklahoma. Edward Honaker has
published two novels - both written in a Virginia
prison. "The thing about it is, you can't let your
incarceration defeat you," Honaker says. "And you can't
let it dictate the rest of your life."
Death has claimed four of the men. Two died of cancer,
one while in prison, and the other six months after his
release.
Leonard Callace of New York died from a heroin overdose
four years after he was freed. "When he got out, he was
never able to put it in back of him," says brother
Pierre Callace.
Kenneth Waters enjoyed freedom for just a matter of
months. His sister, Betty Anne, had only a high school
equivalency diploma but put herself through law school
to help win his release. In March 2001, after 18 years
behind bars for a murder and armed robbery he hadn't
committed, Waters was released. He had contracted
hepatitis C in prison, apparently from dental work. But
that did not kill him.
Last September while taking a shortcut to his brother's
Massachusetts home, Waters fell from a 15-foot wall. He
fractured his skull and died. "It's hard," Betty Anne
Waters said at the time. "But we look at it as six
months of freedom is better than 20 years in jail."
The pace of exonerations is quickening, keeping up with
the availability of genetic testing. The Innocence
Project reported 23 men were cleared last year by DNA,
compared with six in 1992.
That increase has prompted much legislation giving
inmates access to DNA testing to challenge their
convictions. Twenty-five states now have such laws, all
but two passed in the last three years, says Nina
Morrison, the Innocence Project's executive director.
But some new laws have restrictions that she considers
unreasonable - such as a one-year period for inmates to
seek DNA testing. That's not enough time to assemble a
case, she says.
Meanwhile, the number of inmates begging for genetic
analysis grows. The Innocence Project says it has 4,000
cases at some stage of investigation.
The biggest problem, Neufeld says, is the race against
time. In three-quarters of the Innocence Project's
cases, physical evidence such as hair or blood has been
lost, misplaced or destroyed. During a criminal trial,
the disappearance of evidence can mean acquittal. After
conviction, it can mean losing all chances to prove
one's innocence.
When lawyers for Marvin Anderson wanted DNA analysis in
1993, they were told the evidence against him had been
destroyed. But a swab containing genetic material was
later found, taped to the inside of a lab technician's
notebook. It proved Anderson was not guilty - though
not everyone was convinced. "Some people look at me
like I'm guilty," he says. "It's hard finding a job. No
one hires a person convicted of rape."
Five years after his exoneration, Anderson is a
trucker, scraping by on $200 to $400 a week. He faces
the hardest task of the men able to work - earning a
living wage.
Others say they cannot work because of post-traumatic
stress syndrome, depression or physical handicaps.
Of 29 men who told the AP their income, the average
weekly earnings were $438. If "all that's on your
resume is a blank, or state prison for the last 10, 15
years, there's not exactly a bunch of people out there
willing to hire you for other than minimum-wage jobs,"
says Randy Schaffer, a Houston lawyer who represented
three exonerated Texas men.
Steven Toney, a shuttle bus driver in Missouri, earns
slightly more than minimum wage. He says he has
struggled to get beyond menial jobs, but suspects his
past has been held against him by prospective
employers. "How many are going to come out and say,
'I'm not hiring you because you were incarcerated'?" he
asks. "But I don't get the call."
When Eduardo Velazquez looks for work, he carries a
newspaper photo of himself taken the day of his
release. After 13 years in a Massachusetts prison, he
wants to prove he did nothing wrong. Still, says the
35-year-old man, no one will hire him.
Ronald Williamson came within five days of being
executed for a murder and rape. After 11 years in
prison, his bipolar disease degenerated to hearing
voices and psychotic episodes. Today, the former minor-
league ballplayer's best chance for a job is an
application he recently submitted to a cafeteria.
The families of these men also suffer.
Moto, the Pennsylvania man, recalls how his children
would grab his legs as they ended their prison visits
and plead to the guards, '"Let my daddy go!"'
Some families remain together, others are ripped apart.
Steve Linscott was convicted of murdering a young woman
in suburban Chicago. Then a college Bible student
managing a Christian halfway house with his wife, he
told police about a strange dream he had, which in some
ways was similar to the attack. The police considered
it a confession. He ended up going to prison for more
than three years. Linscott's wife and children moved to
southern Illinois, near the penitentiary, and waited
for him. Now a therapist for emotionally disturbed
children, he is working on his second master's degree.
Ben Salazar was married to his childhood sweetheart,
Christina. After four years of bringing their three
children to a Texas prison visiting room, she couldn't
cope anymore. Salazar couldn't stand to see her suffer.
"I told her, 'You do what you have to do.' And she went
on with her life. She filed for divorce. It was hard
for me to say that ... We grew up together." Now 36, he
is engaged to someone else.
Billy Wardell, 37, has a wife, a 2-year-old daughter, a
house and a job as a machinist - every single thing he
dreamed of during 11 years in an Illinois prison. And
yet something is missing. "There's a big gap that makes
me wonder ... all the things I could have been and
could have done," he says. "Now there's just a big
piece of time that's gone."
Ronald Cotton Jr. faces the future by looking,
unflinchingly, at his past. Jennifer Thompson is the
rape victim whose mistaken identification put him in
prison for 10 years. He has become her friend.
Together, they give speeches. She lobbied to change
laws so Cotton would be entitled to more than the
$5,000 North Carolina originally offered as
compensation. He received nearly $110,000. After
becoming a free man in 1995, Cotton bought some land,
got married, fathered a child and found work as a
machine operator.
Still, he is haunted. "I know if it happened once," he
says, "it can happen again."
By Sharon Cohen, Deborah Hastings, AP national writers.