...to make the best of a bad situation, and put to work everything I’ve learned along the way...
...to practice the nuance and compassion and empathy that was denied me by those eager to vilify and punish.
So I’ve been building bridges, talking to victims and vilified men and women, advocating for criminal justice reform.
But the thing I’m most proud of is Labyrinths, the podcast I created with my novelist husband @manunderbridge. I’m grateful for the opportunity to do this work and meet other survivors along the way.
And nothing gives me greater satisfaction than to know that I’ve reached someone.
It helps me shrug the hate off. To remember that it doesn’t define me.
I define me.
Season 2 of Labyrinths premieres today with episode 1 of a 5-part miniseries on infertility. In today’s episode, I bare my soul about my recent miscarriage.
I hope you’ll listen. And if you like the podcast, please consider supporting us! We’re independent and ad-free. If we had one supporter for every hundred cruel messages that come in, that would more than balance out the hate.
When I was found guilty of murder & sentenced to 26 years, I lost all hope that the truth of my innocence would ever matter. The prison put me on suicide watch. It was shortly thereafter that I received a curious letter from a psychology professor. /🧵
He told me that he was an expert in police interrogations, and he asked me to describe my interrogation to him with as much detail as I could remember. So I wrote him a letter back. It was difficult, because that night was the most terrifying night of my life.
My roommate Meredith had been brutally raped and murdered five days prior in her own bedroom while I was spending the night at my boyfriend’s house. The killer was on the loose. And I was trying my best to help the police.
It’s been an ugly, bloody week for the US. Alabama just executed Alan Miller, which makes five men executed since Sept 20th. We need to abolish the death penalty. Here’s a dozen reasons why. /Thread
#1. We end up executing the innocent. The evidence against Marcellus Williams, executed by Missouri on Tuesday, hinged on unreliable witness testimony. None of the DNA or fingerprints from the crime scene matched him.
The DA and the victim’s family opposed his death sentence. But the Missouri AG, @AGAndrewBailey, and Governor Mike Parson, @GovParsonMO, executed him anyway.
Marcellus Williams will be executed on Sept 24--despite plenty of evidence of his innocence, the prosecutor's confession of racial bias, and opposition from the victim's family--unless Governor Mike Parsons (@GovParsonMO) finds his conscience. /🧵
Marcellus Williams has been on death row for 23 years proclaiming his innocence for the murder of reporter Felicia Gayle in 1998. The crime scene had tons of forensic evidence: fingerprints, footprints, hair, and even DNA on the murder weapon. None of it matches Williams.
The prosecution's entire case was based on incentivized witness testimony from two people with pending criminal charges who were offered leniency and reward money. Their testimony didn't provide any new information, and was inconsistent with their own prior statements.
The Italian justice system has been gaslighting me for 17 years now. It began during my interrogation, and it continues in the courts, most recently in the legal motivation released on August 8th which explains why they found me guilty of slander back in June. /🧵
This gaslighting is upsetting and triggering—hearing a judge offer illogical arguments, present falsehoods as facts, and label me a liar—but it also inspires me to keep fighting, because the police should be held accountable for their abuses of power.
This latest trial was to determine whether a single document—a note, or memoriale, I wrote to recant the two statements I was coerced into signing during my interrogation—was slanderous against my friend and employer, Patrick Lumumba.
Yesterday, the Court of Appeals in Florence upheld my conviction for slander after I gave some emotional testimony. I came to Italy to show I wasn't afraid, to look the judge and jury in the eyes, and to hear the verdict from their own lips.
/thread
I'd like to share with you what I told the court in Italian before they sentenced me to 3 years in prison, punishing me yet again, for the harmful actions of others, punishing me for how the police victimized me. Here is my statement (originally delivered in Italian).
"A lot of people think that the worst night of my life was on December 4th, 2009, when I was convicted of a murder I didn’t commit and sentenced to 26 years in prison. But it wasn’t. The worst night of my life was on November 5, 2007.
After four days of questioning at the police station, I spoke with my mom on the phone. I told her I was fine, that I was helping the police, but her mom instincts were telling her something was off. She bought the first plane ticket to Italy that she could.
/Thread
The cops had tapped my phone, so they knew she was coming to my aid. Soon, I wouldn't be alone and vulnerable, soon I might even have a lawyer. That was the night they decided to break me.
My mom landed in Rome while I was being interrogated overnight, slapped, yelled at, and gaslit. My phone was on the table, ringing. I desperately wanted to answer it. They wouldn't let me.
She found out from the news the next day: her daughter had been arrested for murder.