softheart
05-06-2004, 03:41 AM
Nicky is doing very well, I talk to him several times a week. He soon will be going to France for some lectures. He is pretty excited about going there and being able to see things he has never seen.
softie
Freed by DNA test, inmate seeks reform.
By Larry Fish
Inquirer Staff Writer
Before his 22-year stint on Pennsylvania's death row, Nicholas Yarris
was an acknowledged clotheshorse.
Now, still reveling in the sweetness of freedom won in January by DNA
testing, he spoke yesterday to the annual meeting of the Pennsylvania
Prison Society in a new white-and-pastels outfit with alligator shoes.
For Yarris, 42, being able to assert his fashion sense is the kind of
small but vital liberty that prison strips away. He told the reformist
Prison Society, founded in 1787, that prison dehumanizes and humiliates
inmates in countless petty ways.
"If we're going to remain with this system that maintains the death
penalty, the least we could do is be very dignified with how we treat
them," Yarris said.
After spending half his life facing death for a 1981 rape and murder,
Yarris is now on the lecture circuit. He told the society that he
needed the money to help his family in Southwest Philadelphia, who
spent a lot on his long quest for freedom.
His talk at the Art Museum to the society was from the heart. William
DiMascio, the group's executive director, said that there was no fee,
but that Yarris probably would get the same small honorarium given to
all speakers.
Yarris said yesterday that he had spoken publicly about 10 times,
mostly at universities and schools, adding happily that he was about to
go on the road.
He wants to continue working to improve conditions in prisons, he said,
and to end the death penalty.
But he said there was something he feared worse than the death sentence
that he faced for decades: the possibility that his term would be
converted to life without parole. That would mean, he said, that he
would face the horrors of prison as everyone important in his life
died, beyond his reach.
Yarris was convicted by a Delaware County jury in 1982 of the
abduction, rape and murder of Linda Mae Craig, 32, of Boothwyn.
Though part of the case against him was his alleged confession to other
prisoners, Yarris had always maintained his innocence.
A bit of blood at the crime scene matched his relatively rare type. But
in the later 1980s, Yarris became convinced that the emerging science
of DNA testing could help him. He is believed to have been the first
convict in the United States to seek such evidence to clear him.
It wasn't until early last year that Yarris got a test showing that DNA
from the victim's clothing was not his.
His conviction was vacated and Delaware County District Attorney G.
Michael Green said he would not retry Yarris. The case remains unsolved.
Yarris explained daily life on death row, alone in a cell 22 to 23
hours a day, then strip-searched for a one- or two-hour outing to a
"dog cage," which he said was an 18-by-19-foot outdoor enclosure
surrounded by other prisoners in adjoining cages.
Although inmates are strip-searched before leaving and returning to
their cells, Yarris said, they were not allowed to have pencils and
were required to use only pens made of flexible rubber.
Contact staff writer Larry Fish lfish@phillynews.com
.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/8598906.htm
softie
Freed by DNA test, inmate seeks reform.
By Larry Fish
Inquirer Staff Writer
Before his 22-year stint on Pennsylvania's death row, Nicholas Yarris
was an acknowledged clotheshorse.
Now, still reveling in the sweetness of freedom won in January by DNA
testing, he spoke yesterday to the annual meeting of the Pennsylvania
Prison Society in a new white-and-pastels outfit with alligator shoes.
For Yarris, 42, being able to assert his fashion sense is the kind of
small but vital liberty that prison strips away. He told the reformist
Prison Society, founded in 1787, that prison dehumanizes and humiliates
inmates in countless petty ways.
"If we're going to remain with this system that maintains the death
penalty, the least we could do is be very dignified with how we treat
them," Yarris said.
After spending half his life facing death for a 1981 rape and murder,
Yarris is now on the lecture circuit. He told the society that he
needed the money to help his family in Southwest Philadelphia, who
spent a lot on his long quest for freedom.
His talk at the Art Museum to the society was from the heart. William
DiMascio, the group's executive director, said that there was no fee,
but that Yarris probably would get the same small honorarium given to
all speakers.
Yarris said yesterday that he had spoken publicly about 10 times,
mostly at universities and schools, adding happily that he was about to
go on the road.
He wants to continue working to improve conditions in prisons, he said,
and to end the death penalty.
But he said there was something he feared worse than the death sentence
that he faced for decades: the possibility that his term would be
converted to life without parole. That would mean, he said, that he
would face the horrors of prison as everyone important in his life
died, beyond his reach.
Yarris was convicted by a Delaware County jury in 1982 of the
abduction, rape and murder of Linda Mae Craig, 32, of Boothwyn.
Though part of the case against him was his alleged confession to other
prisoners, Yarris had always maintained his innocence.
A bit of blood at the crime scene matched his relatively rare type. But
in the later 1980s, Yarris became convinced that the emerging science
of DNA testing could help him. He is believed to have been the first
convict in the United States to seek such evidence to clear him.
It wasn't until early last year that Yarris got a test showing that DNA
from the victim's clothing was not his.
His conviction was vacated and Delaware County District Attorney G.
Michael Green said he would not retry Yarris. The case remains unsolved.
Yarris explained daily life on death row, alone in a cell 22 to 23
hours a day, then strip-searched for a one- or two-hour outing to a
"dog cage," which he said was an 18-by-19-foot outdoor enclosure
surrounded by other prisoners in adjoining cages.
Although inmates are strip-searched before leaving and returning to
their cells, Yarris said, they were not allowed to have pencils and
were required to use only pens made of flexible rubber.
Contact staff writer Larry Fish lfish@phillynews.com
.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/8598906.htm