In a video inter­view with Voice of America, for­mer death row inmate Shujaa Graham dis­cuss­es the emo­tion­al toll of being wrong­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in California in 1976. Graham was con­vict­ed of the mur­der of a prison guard dur­ing a protest and spent five years on death row before being acquit­ted of the crime. He went through four tri­als, only one of which result­ed in a guilty ver­dict. He first went to prison for a rob­bery con­vic­tion, which was also over­turned, at age 18. Graham said, ​“What has hap­pened to me is over with and done. No one can bring those years back, and no one can remove the psy­cho­log­i­cal scars. No one can remove the phys­i­cal scars. But Shujaa Graham can go on and make sure what hap­pened to him nev­er hap­pens to any­one else.” Graham’s wife, Phyllis, adds that the expe­ri­ence of fac­ing exe­cu­tion still weighs on him. She said, ​“It’s been a long time now that we’ve been togeth­er and he still suf­fers and I think there’s still real­ly ways that he holds on to what that for­ma­tive years of your 20s, is your life, of how you look at the world. His were in prison and death row and being tor­tured.” Graham con­cludes, ​“Each and every day that I wake up, death row is the first thing on my mind. I can look at my chil­dren and look at my wife and say what if California would’ve had their way, I wouldn’t be here today.”

(T. Hadavi, ​“For Freed Inmate, Painful Memories of Life on Death Row,” Voice of America, August 8, 2012). Shujaa Graham is one of the 140 peo­ple who were sen­tenced to death and lat­er exon­er­at­ed since 1973. See Innocence. Listen to DPIC’s pod­cast on Innocence. See also DPIC’s Multi-media page.

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