It’s #WrongfulConvictionDay, and I want to introduce you to some exonerees! Please RETWEET this thread to help raise awareness about the problem of wrongful convictions and to celebrate those who’ve survived the fire.
There are far too many wrongful convictions with a number in their title. Here’s me and @mandunderbridge with Korey Wise of the Central Park 5. Korey was 16 when he was arrested and served nearly 14 years before he was exonerated.
Here’s Anna Vasquez of the San Antonio 4, a group of gay hispanic women falsely accused of child molestation during the satanic panic. Anna served 15 years before she was exonerated in 2016.
Here’s Damien Echols of the #WM3. Damien was 18 when he was arrested, also in connection with a satanic panic case. He served 18 years before he was released on an Alford plea. He & his codefendants, Jason Baldwin and Jesse Misskelley are still fighting for full exoneration
Obie Anthony is my exoneree twin! We were both released from prison on the exact same day: Oct 4th, 2011. I interviewed Obie for Labyrinths. He now helps exonerees after they’re released with his foundation @exoneratenationpodcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/exo…
It is surprisingly common for exonerees to devote themselves to helping others. During the pandemic, I interviewed dozens for @crimestorymedia. Khalil Rushdan spent 15 years inside for a wrongful murder conviction. He now works with the ACLU in Arizona. crimestory.com/2020/04/13/ama…
Marty Tankleff @exoner8ed spent 17 years locked up for the murder of his own parents before he was exonerated. He too became a lawyer. Like me, he’s on the board of the @Douglassproject helping to humanize the incarcerated. crimestory.com/2020/05/10/ama…
Noura Jackson was 18 when she was wrongly convicted of stabbing her mother to death. She served 11 years before she was freed. crimestory.com/2020/06/03/ama…
Heidi Goodwin was wrongfully convicted due to the now discredited shaken baby syndrome. She served 10 years before she was exonerated. crimestory.com/2020/04/30/ama…
Jens Soering was a 18-year-old German foreign exchange student in Virginia when he was wrongfully convicted of a double homicide. His case has many echoes of my own, but it took 34 years for him to be released. I covered his story here: art19.com/shows/the-trut…
And there are so, so so many more. Felipe Rodriguez, 27 years.
Irishman @MisePeterP was on death row for 15 years. After his exoneration, he met his wife Sunny Jacobs, 17 years on death row. Together they founded the @SunnyCenterFDN.
Ryan Ferguson, 10 years, and Darryl Burton, 23 years
When I first got out of prison and fully entered the public eye, I wanted to disappear. I wanted to be featureless, shapeless, blurred like a poorly pixelated background NPC. Desire made me a target, or at least that was the message I had internalized.
Not just sexual desire, but the desire to be seen, to be known, to connect. To this day, it still stuns me that I had to rediscover my sexuality in the most repressive and punishing place imaginable: prison.
In my book, Free, I write about Lenny (not her real name), a fellow inmate who developed a crush on me. She wasn’t the first person in my life to project her fantasies onto me, but in her case, I wasn’t just an attractive object.
Today, an Italian judge ruled that there is sufficient evidence for Rudy Guede—the man who murdered my roommate eighteen years ago—to stand trial for a new set of charges against another young woman: sexual assault, domestic battery, and stalking.
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I wish I could say I was surprised, but I’m not. Not by the evidence, which includes witness testimony as well as thousands of photos, text messages, and audio files. Not by the bravery of the young woman who came forward.
Certainly not by Guede’s denial; that’s the one thing he’s been consistent about for the past eighteen years: refusing to take responsibility for his violence.
It's my birthday today. I'm thinking about how I stopped celebrating my birthday in prison. It felt like a pointless ritual that belonged to the outside world. I was facing more years inside than I’d been alive so marking the passage of time wasn’t something to celebrate.
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I turned 21 in prison, with no rousing cheers for a first legal drink. Not even prison hooch, though my cellmates did attempt to ferment pineapple juice with pizza yeast in a two-liter water bottle hidden behind the toilet.
Just five days prior, I’d passed my first Fourth of July in prison more homesick than ever. I wasn’t even in the mood to go outside for “aria” and walk around in circles under the hot July sun, though it had become the highlight of my days.
This battle over Abrego Garcia is simple. It doesn't matter that he was here illegally. It doesn't matter if he's a gang member or if he's a wife beater (both of which are disputed). It doesn't matter if you think he deserves to be deported or to be in prison. / thread
It doesn't matter if you think the county is overrun with immigrants who entered illegally. It doesn't matter if the system is burdened with processing these immigration hearings. Only one thing matters here, and all the rest is a distraction:
There was standing court order preventing his deportation, and he was arrested and deported anyway. Even if you think that court order was unwise, flawed, or based on politically motivated reasoning, it was a legal court order. It was never challenged. It was merely violated.
"I'm not OK with sentencing innocent people," says JD Vance while defending the decision to send a man to an El Salvador prison without due process, without a trial, without the presumption of innocence. We've arrived at the Ministry of Truth.
Yes, every system has an error rate, and wrongful convictions are inevitable. That is why error correction mechanisms are crucial. This is why we have appeals. This is why when an automaker installs a faulty part, they issue a recall. RECALL Kilmar Abrego Garcia!
Vance is arguing here that enforcing the law inevitably means errors, and that providing due process to people is inherently in conflict with enforcing the law, so we just have to accept these errors. But he also wants to say he's not okay with sentencing innocent people.
I remain wrongly convicted of slander in Italy, and loads of people still think I'm a killer despite my acquittal. I am at peace with this. I will also never stop fighting to clear my name.
This is a paradox. Embracing this paradox is a key that can free you from suffering.
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You must accept that the world is on fire and simultaneously try to douse the flames. You must accept that your life is perfect, with all its flaws and annoyances and griefs and burdens, and still strive to improve yourself and your circumstances.
Zen Master Suzuki Roshi put it this way: "Everything is perfect…and there’s plenty of room for improvement!" What does this mean? How could everything be "perfect" when there are wars and famines and rapes and murders, and myriad injustices that no one deserves?