Surviving justice : America's wrongfully convicted and exonerated / edited by Lola Vollen and Dave Eggers ; associate editors, Noria Jablonski, Amy Johnson, Marc Herman, Michael McCarrin, Steve Sander, Sarah Stewart Taylor ; interviews and reporting completed by students at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, Neil Berman, Leonie Sherman, Sarah Wiener-Boone, Jonathan Jones, Michael Chandler, Krista Mahr, Arwen Curry, Jori Lewis, Traci Curry, Ella McPherson, Rebecca Goldman, Khushbu Shah, Nicole Hill, Anna Sussman ; additional reporting by Dominic Luxford, Alex Carp, Candace Chen, James Barmann, Chris Ying, Jordan Bass, Emily Taguchi Kligensmith.
Glossary. Exoneree Roundtable -- Introduction / by Lola and Dave Eggers -- Life after Exoneration -- Christopher Ochoa -- My mama didn't raise no killers / Juan Melendez -- I stepped into a dream / Gary Gauger -- I am the expert / James Newsome -- Thank God for DNA / Calvin Willis -- If a five-year-old says you did it, you did it / John Stoll -- Now I question everything / Beverly Monroe -- Sheep among wolves / Michael Evans and Paul Terry -- Flowers in your hair / David Pope -- I'm a dead man walking / Joseph Amrine -- Family man / Peter Rose -- Bad things happen to good people / Kevin Green -- People don't know how lucky they are to have their liberty / Exoneree Roundtable -- Appendix A : Causes of Wrongful Conviction -- Appendix B : The Prison Experience -- Appendix C : Life after Exoneration -- Appendix D : Supplementary Material -- Glossary.
Summary:
"Beverly Monroe spent seven years in prison for murdering her companion of thirteen years; in fact, he had killed himself. Christopher Ochoa was persuaded to confess to a rape and murder he did not commit, and served twelve years of his life sentence before he was freed by DNA evidence. Michael Evans and Paul Terry each spent twenty-seven years in prison for a brutal rape and murder they did not commit. They were teenagers when they entered prison; they were middle-aged men when DNA proved their innocence. After spending years behind bars, hundreds of men and women with incontrovertible proof of their innocence including 120 from death row have been released from America's prisons. They were wrongfully convicted because of problems that plague many criminal proceedings: inept defense lawyers, overzealous prosecutors, deceitful and coercive interrogation tactics, bad science, snitches, and eyewitness misidentification. The lives of these victims of the U.S. criminal justice system were effectively wrecked. Finally free, usually after more than a decade of incarceration, they re-enter society with nothing but the scars from a harrowing descent into prison only to struggle to survive on the outside. The thirteen men and women portrayed here, and the hundreds of others who have been exonerated, are the tip of the iceberg. There are countless others thousands by all estimates who are in prison today for crimes they did not commit. These are the stories of some of the wrongfully convicted, who have managed, often by sheer luck, to prove their innocence. Their stories are spellbinding, heartbreaking, unimaginable, and ultimately inspiring. After reading these deeply personal accounts, you will never look at the criminal justice system the same way."--Publisher's website.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.