Innocent people who spend Death Row, Here's What You Actually Get When You're Released in the U.S

 You enter your death row cell at the young age of 25. The door slams behind you. And for the next few months, you hope in vain that somebody will realize what a terrible injustice has happened. Perhaps a new witness will come forward you think, or video evidence will conclusively prove that you are an innocent man. But that doesn't happen. And slowly but surely over the years, you start to lose your mind locked down in that cell most of the day, your friends, your family. Well, you think they believe you but you know that some have their doubts. Since you were accused of killing a child. The prison code means you got a kill on a sight label attached to you one day that almost happens and you have to spend a few weeks in the infirmary. Finally, after 19 years and with the help of some compassionate lawyers, you win and appeal. It turned out the cops were corrupt, and you were badly represented in your initial trial. 19 years the madness the beating the loss of real life, surely you deserve to be compensated. Well, that's another battle you'll have to fight just like our subjects in this Blog

Case 1

Anthony Ray Hinton on February 25, 1985, a fast-food manager was shot and killed in the state of 

Alabama. On July 2 of that year, another fast-food manager was shot and killed in a similar armed robbery not far away. And yet another armed robbery a person was shot but survived the ordeal. Police thought all the robberies had been committed by the same person. And so they asked the survivor to take a look at some mug shots. That person picked out Anthony Ray Hinton, a 29-year-old man that worked at the supermarket warehouse and lived with his mother. The cops dragged him in for questioning and like any American citizen, he was given free legal counsel if he couldn't provide his own, except that lawyer was hardly a suitable defense for the young man once telling him all yell blacks always say you didn't do something. Police found a revolver at Hinton's mother's house, a gun they believed could have been used in three crimes, and didn't manage to hire a ballistics expert with the little money he could raise. But the problem was that the expert was hardly trained at all. He failed miserably defending Hinton in court had he been a real expert Hinton would very likely not have done it anytime. The gun was all the prosecutor needed. There were no fingerprints and no eyewitnesses. Hinton was sentenced to death in 1988. He appealed but the conviction was affirmed. A year later, the Supreme Court of Alabama affirmed his conviction again three years past with Hinton spending most of his time in his cell death row in solitary confinement for most of the day, with just an hour a day that prisoners can spend outside their cells to pass the time he read, and he read voraciously. Something he didn't know back then was that this would have a huge impact on his life. Reading in the book club he created helped somewhat, as did his regular visits from his mother and best friend. Unfortunately, his mother died in 2002. While Hinton was still behind bars. He hoped that an organization called the Equal Justice Initiative might help them gain his freedom. The nonprofit organization worked on his case for many, many years. But no matter how many forensics experts came forward to say that the gun and the bullets didn't match, the state of Alabama refused to overturn the conviction, or at least allow him to go to trial again. Finally in 2014, when Hinton was now a middle-aged man, the Supreme Court of the United States said that Hinton's original counsel had been constitutionally deficient. It turned out that the ballistics expert his lawyer, had hired wasn't even a ballistics expert. He didn't even have both of his eyes. In this new trial. The prosecution admitted that the bullets that had been fired had not come from Hinton's mother's gone, the Jefferson County Circuit Judge overturned his conviction and the state dropped all charges and his lawyer said race poverty inadequate legal assistance, and prosecutorial indifference to innocence conspired to create a textbook example of injustice. Hinton said everybody that played a part in sending me to death row, you will answer to God, what do you get for 28 years of wrongful imprisonment? What do you receive for being woefully represented? Well, the state said that he did not prove his innocence and added that he didn't deserve any compensation. To this day he has received nothing. To make matters worse, the state of Alabama recently passed the legislation making it harder to get adequate counsel. It's called the fair Justice Act. But don't let that fool you. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, it's more like the Orwellian doublespeak In fact, Hinton has said if it was enacted while he was incarcerated, he would have been executed. If there can be any good news it's that Hinton has written a highly praised memoir called the sun does shine how I found life and freedom on death row. He also was awarded a Doctorate of Humane Letters degree. According to the Innocence Project. 17 states refused to compensate the innocent. Why? Well, we have no idea. Alabama isn't one of them, by the way, but the states still refuse to compensate Mr. Hinton. Now for our next case, something equally as surprising. 

Case 2

Kennedy Brewer, the date was May 3, 1992. And in the early hours of the morning, a three-year-old girl was abducted from her home. What happened to her was brutal, and we won't go into details. She did not survive. The girl Christine Jackson was the daughter of Gloria Jackson. GLORIA was the partner of 21 years old, Kennedy Brewer, he'd been babysitting the child that night along with two other kids that were biological children he'd had with Gloria. Since there was no forced entry to the house.

[Kennedy with his girlfriend Gloria]

 Police believed that Brewer was a suspect. This was despite the fact that one of the windows to the house was broken. It wasn't until three years after the brewer's initial arrest that the case went to court. There it was revealed that the bodily fluids taken from the victim's body could not sufficiently be DNA tested, but it was also revealed that there were bite marks on the body. Where do they come from? Well, the defense argued that since the body was found in a creek, they were very likely the bites of some kind of insects. The prosecution disagreed with a forensic deontologist, stating that the marks had definitely come from Brewer. It should be said at the time of the trial that the bite mark expert was suspended from the American Board of forensic ontology. It should also be said that bitemark testimony is very controversial and has been proven to be unreliable in a slew of cases. On March 24, 1995, Brewer was sentenced to death. He always maintained his innocence. But the years passed and not much happened. Then in 2001, up to date, DNA testing showed that the semen taken from the victim's body did not belong to Brewer, so you think that was enough for a quick retrial. But as you likely know, the cogs of the American justice system grind at a very slow rate. It wasn't until 2007 that Brewer was released from prison, but we should say that he was only on bail. The prosecution wanted to retry Brewer, and then what happened he might wonder the answer is the DNA was tested again, and it matched an original suspect in the initial investigation named Justin Albert Johnson. Johnson soon admitted to Christine Jackson's murder, but get this he also admitted to a very similar murder that had happened in the nearby area. In that case, again, there were bite marks on the victim. And yet again, the same forensic Donald intelligence stood up in court and said they matched to demand. This time, a guy named Evan Brooks even worse, Johnson was the only man out of those three who had a history of violence matching the crimes. In 2008. Both Brewer and Brooks were released. The former head spent 18 years in prison in the latter 15 years. Brooks died in 2018. In this case, the state of Mississippi paid Brewer $500,000 in compensation, but the sim was paid at 50,000 a year the money ran out. So Brewer tried getting factory jobs and he also earned money by mowing lawns and working on a fish farm. Brewer said it's very hard to find meaningful employment after being locked out for something you didn't do. In 2020 Brewer had a stroke Not long after his mother died, a fundraising page was set up to help him pay for the medical bills. Okay, now for something a bit different. 

Case 3

Richard Phillips, this man spent 45 years behind bars and he was innocent all the time. We are cheating a bit here because he wasn't handed the death sentence but he was given life without the possibility of parole. The reason we want to tell you this story is because 45 years is the record in the US for the most time spent in prison as an innocent man. In 1972. The 26-year-old Philips was handed his sentence for a murder in Detroit, a crime he said he didn't commit. For many years. He tried to get the sentence overturned, but on every occasion, he failed. Then in 2010, his co-defendant in the case one Richard Palumbo told the parole board that Philips had not committed the crime. He said another man had done it a man named Fred Mitchell Palumbo had said nothing at the time out of fear. But As the years passed in prison, he was consumed by guilt. As his health got worse, he feared what he might meet on the other side after having allowed an innocent man to spend so long in prison. We should also say that Fred Mitchell scared Columbo and said that if he speaks up his family would die. But when Palumbo heard that Mitchell was dead, he had nothing to fear. The case went back to court and their Palumbo told the truth, but all the prosecution could offer Phillips was this say you did it and you'll get out because of the time you serve. Philip's response was I'd rather die in prison than admit to something I didn't do. At age 71 in 2018, Philips got out an innocent man, but a man that knew no one on the outside and really didn't know how things worked in modern life. He said he was overjoyed but also very scared when entering this new world, a world with computer technology with strange cars, and weird-looking gadgets. He looks well now and is getting used to his new life for his 46 years of wrongful imprisonment. He was compensated one and a half million withholding evidence. How much does a person get paid if the authorities have deliberately withheld evidence and they are found out 

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[Richard Phillips ]

    Case 4 

let's look at a case that involved a man named Nathson fields in 1984

This man was accused of killing two people and what was said to be a gang-related crime. Fields was innocent. And the police knew that because it was later discovered that detectives had hidden the evidence in a locker that proved fields didn't do it. A judge was also involved in the corruption and had taken a bribe. That's how fields got a retrial and how the new evidence came to light. He spent 18 years in prison with 11 of them being on death row. In 2016. A judge ruled that police had hidden evidence and they had also falsified incriminating evidence fields was awarded $22 million. The tragedy is in the last reports we can find about fields he said he had not yet received a dime of the money. This 65-year-old man says he now devotes his life to helping death row survivors. 

Case 5

The next man is John Thompson in 1985 in New Orleans, Thompson was sentenced to 49 years in prison for an armed robbery and also given the death sentence for a murder at a hotel. He was innocent of both crimes. What is criminally frightening about the case is the fact that just 30 days before he was going to be executed, evidence that had been hidden for 15 years by the Orleans Parish district attorney's office was discovered by a private investigator. That evidence proved without a doubt that Thompson was innocent of the robbery. But the robbery was connected to the murder conviction. So a judge ruled that Thompson should be exonerated. He was 40 years old. He sued for the crime that had been committed against him and although he was awarded $14 million of Supreme Court later overturned that decision. This happened even though it was discovered that the district attorney at the time of Thompson's conviction had suppressed exculpatory evidence in nine out of 36 death penalty convictions. No one has ever been held accountable. Thompson later created a nonprofit called the resurrection after exoneration and organization to help reconnect exonerees to their communities. He died in 2017, aged 55. A few years before his death, he wrote, I don't care about the money. I just want to know why the prosecutors who hid the evidence sent me to prison for something I didn't do and nearly had me killed are not in jail themselves. 

[John Thompson cleared after 14 years on death row ]

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