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Did the time — not the crime. But exonereres soon discover
winning their freedom may have been the easy part.
It seems America’s love of prisons is the forgiving kind — forgiving when blind Justice gets it wrong. Juries are human, after all, and capable of mistakes. But years spent serving someone else’s sentence can be devastating, even to those who suddenly find freedom. Adjustment is seldom easy.
No one is sure how many wrongly-imprisoned are under lock and key, but 1% would total tens of thousands given the enormous size of the U.S. inmate population. The USA is the world’s incarceration nation with 2.3 million doing time. China, four times more populous, is a distant second with 1.6 million in prison.
“The United States has less than 5% of the world’s population, but almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.”
—The New York Times | Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations’
 Playback: Innocent Mistakes |
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America’s urge to punish makes it difficult for the imprisoned innocent to challenge bad verdicts. More than 400 exonerees have won their rightful freedom, some though indisputable DNA technology unavailable at the time of their convictions. Others languish in overcrowded cells — victims of poor due process, inept counsel or sketchy witnesses — their innocence far more difficult to prove.
Each year, the nation’s volunteer Innocence Projects and public defenders are swamped with thousands more calls for help than they can examine or answer. This, in a nation that’s fairly cynical when it comes to claims of innocence by the incarcerated.
Rather than undo mistakes with apologies and good faith efforts to set things right, America’s justice system often seems determined to inflict additional pain and suffering on the wrongfully-convicted it is forced to release.
Some prosecutors cling to their convictions, refusing to admit mistakes and stigmatizing those being freed. Exonerees are discharged with no preparation for life on the outside, or support once there. Job skills are largely nonexistent among those who have spent much, if not most, of their lives behind bars. They are denied prison’s parting gifts: the few dollars and bus ticket rightfully-convicted criminals are given on release. American Justice has few contingency plans for errors in judgment.
Once free, exonerees struggle to rebuild lost lives, a battle that includes court costs and legal hurdles to have conviction records expunged. Compensation can require years of lobbying in states providing it. Many exonerees simply give up under the added burden of prison-induced post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression that exacerbate the difficult task of starting over.
Timothy Atkins of Venice was convicted of one count of murder and two counts of robbery in 1987. Though innocent, he spent more than 20 years in California’s penal system — a victim of coerced testimony and a double-dealing jailhouse snitch. Atkins was 17 when arrested, he is now 40. More than half his life has been taken by justice gone bad, but he is not alone.
In a five-part series for KNX 1070 Newsradio, we meet Tim Atkins and two other exonerees attempting to regain their lives with no assistance from the states that convicted them. Greg Wilhoit spent five years on Oklahoma’s Death Row before a public defender saved him from death by lethal injection. Calvin Willis spent 23 years at hard labor at Louisiana’s Angola State Prison on an erroneous rape conviction, missing the birth and childhood of his only son.
We also hear from Innocence Projects in San Diego and Santa Clara attempting to win the freedom of the wrongly-convicted, the Executive Director of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, and Berkeley-based Life After Exoneration which offers exonerees reentry support.
From the archives
A SALUTE TO COLUMBIA SQUAREClick pic to enlarge
This was the final KNX broadcast from Columbia Square — August 21, 2005 — a finale for 67-years of radio history at the Hollywood broadcasting landmark. This 55-minute special documents the history of CBS’s Los Angeles headquarters from 1938 to 2005 when KNX moved to the CBS Broadcast Center on L.A.’s Miracle Mile.
The show features Bob Hope, Al Jolson, C.B. DeMille and CBS founder William Paley in excerpts from the grand opening broadcast. Jack Benny, Orson Welles and other radio stars are heard in clips from classic comedies and dramas.
Living legends who crafted shows in Radio’s Golden Age, including writer-producer Norman Corwin, tell inside stories while radio historian Leonard Maltin adds historical perspective. Also featured: the birth of all-news radio in Los Angeles and a pre-dawn ghost hunt that unearths Bob Crane, Jack Benny and Bill Paley in Columbia Square’s haunted halls.
| Playback: A Salute to Columbia Square |
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