Cornelius and Selma
You could have gotten out if you just admit to being a sex offender. Just admit that and you’re free. Lie and see the light. It is 2004. You will wait seven more years for the truth to be told.
You are innocent.
You tell them you are in prison for a robbery you did not commit. You tell them the only way they can prove your innocence is to go back and reopen the rape case that occurred during the robbery. If they do a DNA test it will show that you did not rape the girl.
They sense some validity in what you say so they go through the steps. Something about your tone. Something about you. It will take a half a decade to get an answer, but the Innocence Project takes your case on.
The Dallas District Attorney’s office finally cooperates and conducts an extensive search on the physical evidence that had been preserved from the rape that took place in 1979. The victim’s pubic hair combings and cuttings were recovered, so the forensics lab conducts DNA testing (STR-DNA) on the material and compared it with samples taken from the defendants concluding that both you and your co-defendant are innocent.
You were two months into the age of 20 at the time. Now you’re 51. 66-percent of your life spent behind bars.
You stand in front of State District Judge Don Adams. He looks at you. You are standing. “You are free to go,” he says. You sit down. It is January 2011. The Dallas District Attorney supports you; he states that your case was mishandled and he believes you are innocent.
You step outside. There are cameras. What do you say after 31 years? They want a quote. You give them one.
“Whatever your truth is you have to stick to it.”
Now you’re 51. What do you do? How do you spend your time?
***
Roughly a third of those who have been exonerated with the aid of the Innocence Project have found ways to get a stable footing.
Christopher Ochoa was convicted of raping, binding, and murdering a woman in 1988. He was exonerated of guilt when the true perpetrator confessed following a religious conversion and ensuing wave of guilt while in prison for a separate crime. Ochoa was released from prison in 2002, he graduated from law school five years later and started his own law practice in Wisconsin.
However, roughly 15-percent of the exonerated find themselves back in prison, struggling mightily to adapt to the outside world that was stolen from them, constantly struggling with drug or alcohol addictions. Like Forest Shomberg, who spent six years in jail, was exonerated and is now back in prison for firearm possession.
“There was no transition,” said Michael Lieberman, Shomberg’s attorney in Isthmus, the daily page of Madison, Wisconsin. “There was nobody there to help give him any structure.”
The Innocence Project does help exonerees with basic necessities, which might include: rent, utilities, medical expenses, transportation and more during the first year of their lives after being released.
“Anyone released from prison needs time and support to transition successfully,” said Karen Wolf, social worker for the Innocence Project in an Innocence Blog posted on May 2, 2012.
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