Professsors Saundra Westervelt and Kimberly Cook of the University of North Carolina recent­ly pub­lished a study enti­tled ​“Coping with Innocence After Death Row.” The study appeared in ​“Contexts” pub­lished by the American Sociological Association. The authors stud­ied the lives of 18 inno­cent men and women exon­er­at­ed from death row. The unique research uncov­ers the dif­fi­cul­ty the exonerees have had in adapt­ing to life out­side of prison with­out the process of ​“dela­bel­ing,” or recog­ni­tion of their inno­cence by society.

“Frequently, com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers still see them as guilty crim­i­nals who ​‘beat the sys­tem,’” not­ed the authors. One exoneree often found ​“child killer” writ­ten in the dirt on his truck, and neigh­bors told anoth­er exoneree’s chil­dren that their moth­er was ​“a babykiller.” The study explores the cop­ing strate­gies and con­tin­ued strug­gles of those who had been exonerated.

(S. Westervelt, K. Cook, ​“Coping with Innocence After Death Row,” 7 Contexts 32 – 37 (Fall 2008, American Sociological Association). See Innocence and Studies.

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