Life After Being Exonerated.
Aside from the costs to house innocent people in prison, the affect a wrongful conviction leaves on the person after they’ve been exonerated lasts a long time, sometimes even forever. Although someone has been exonerated, adjusting to normal life is a lot harder than expected.
This is because, although the conviction has been over-turned, getting it expunged, or removed from their record takes a while, and the conviction may still show up on certain background checks. This makes it harder to get a job, which is important because not all states have compensation plans. States like New York have settlement funds for situations where someone has been wrongfully incarcerated, whereas states such as Pennsylvania do not.
Not to mention, when someone who has just been exonerated is released they’re given no money, no ride unless provided by a family member, and no aftercare aiding in helping with adjusting to everyday life after being incarcerate. This section will introduce a few people who have been exonerated and tell their stories.
Kristine Bunch, as previously stated, was convicted for arson and the murder of her 2-year-old son in 1995. Bunch who was 21 at the time of the crime woke to a fire, which killed her son, in her trailer home. According to the article in Mother Jones, “the prosecutor said he didn’t think the blaze burned Bunch badly enough.” Bunch was charged with Arson, felony murder, and given the maximum sentence of 60 years. Bunch spent her prison sentence sending numerous letters to Innocence lawyers with no return, until 2 female lawyers agreed to take her case. Bunch’s lawyers obtained the raw evidence used in the initial trial and ran samples. The forensic files had been altered to show accelerant in the room making Bunch look guilty. Their team discovered a space heater in the living room was the cause of the fire.
Bunch who was pregnant during trial now spends her free time getting to know her son whom she went 17 years without raising. She also spends her free time volunteering for the Innocence Project that once helped her. Bunch explains how she feels reading each letter stating, “It’s almost like you’re under water and everything is in slow motion. And you can’t seem to pull yourself out of it.”
Some exonerations don’t get happily ever afters like the majority of known exonerations do. Lester Bower spent 30 years on death row before his execution in Texas. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Bower was convicted of killing four men in Grayson County, Texas. Prosecutors linked him to the crime as a suspect, because Bower met with one of the men a few days before the killings. Bower also owned ammunition the prosecutor told the jury was rare and hard to obtain, when after doing research was actually more common than the prosecution stated during trial. The Death Penalty Info Center also says prosecutors withheld information about a tip the the police telling them the murders could possibly be related to drug trafficking.” Bower’s lawyer tried to get the conviction a new sentence shortly before his execution stating “there is a significant linger of doubt regarding guilt or innocence.” Shortly after, the girlfriend of one of the men actually responsible for the murders testifies explaining her boyfriend and his affiliates committed the murder because of a drug deal gone wrong. Bower was executed in 2015 after 30 years on death row.
Although this paper is primarily about people who have been exonerated, you cannot be exonerated without being wrongfully convicted in the first place. This is a topic that touches close to my family because in the Spring of 2001, my brother, Kristopher Durham, was wrongfully convicted for the murder of a Mississippi Sheriff. Kris was walking on a Mississippi highway when a sheriff stopped him on the side of the road.
As the sheriff is making his arrests, he begins to have trouble breathing which causes prosecutors to associate the death with resisting arrest, according to Kris. Initially, Kris was sentenced to the death penalty until his lawyer requested a second autopsy before lethal injection. It was then that the court discovered the sheriff had recently had a triple bypass and determined his weak heart to be the reason for his death.
As I interviewed with my mother, Brenda Durham, she explained that although my brother was proven to be innocent of murder, because he had a history with depression, he was sentenced to reside in Mississippi State Mental Hospital where he still resides today. Brenda says he is not eligible for released until he goes back to court. She talks about how the prosecution made comments such as “As long as I have anything to do with it, he’ll never walk free again”.
When I asked Brenda how she felt about Kris being in a mental hospital for 15 years, she explains the difficulties with visitation at the hospital and the trouble with getting her son home. “Finding lawyers that are genuine and have the means to help has been a true challenge,” Durham explains about the difficulties in her son’s case. She talks about horrific stories of harassment to lawyers that agree to help them. A constant fear she lives with is the idea that she may never see Kris regain his freedom because she is ill.
Here the stories of those that have lived these nightmares and those still living them proves that wrongful convictions DO happen. They affect the lives of not only the exonerated, but their families as well. It’s better to prevent the problem now, so there’s no need to correct the problem later, and innocent people can enjoy their lives without disruption.
