The Associated Press

By SHARON COHEN, DEBORAH HASTINGS, AP National Writers 

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.”