In 2017 Estella was throwing out some old papers when she came upon that 27-year-old envelope. Inside was the certificate. She called out to Johnny: “This is what I got for putting an innocent person in jail for life.” 

She was 75 now. For a generation she had suppressed the shame, the guilt. She had gone through a lot in that time. She’d become more engaged in the world around her. She had seen her children and grandchildren become active citizens. Most important, she’d become more assertive. “I found that you have more power if you talk,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong if you say what you think.” 

She knew how hard it was to take a stand. She knew how hard it was to do the right thing. And now she was going to do it. 

Wrongful convictions can result from any number of cascading errors, blatant oversights, and outright slipups—some conscious and deliberate, some structural and circumstantial. Over 32 years, the investigation and prosecutions of the Schweitzers seem to have incorporated every possible one of them. There was intense media attention putting pressure on police to make an arrest—the “dead white girl” phenomenon. There was cultural bias against Native Hawaiians like the Schweitzers—the legacy, well known to Hawaiians, of lynchings of native men for alleged attacks on white women. There was investigative tunnel vision—going after the Schweitzer brothers even after the facts failed to support that case. There was blind faith in jailhouse informants—a slew of them, all hoping for special favors from prosecutors in return for their testimony. There was junk science—about teeth marks, and tire treads. There even may have been prosecutorial misconduct—a state lawyer misleading a judge about the outcome of one of the brothers’ polygraph tests.

Now that Ian has been exonerated, he needs to reacclimate to life in the world. He had to get a driver’s license and learn how to use a smartphone. He needs to get comfortable around people again. These towns were small enough already. For decades the Schweitzers were the area’s greatest villains; now they run into people and those people are nice. At the market and at restaurants, they congratulate Ian and ask if they can give him a hug. It’s weird. He can’t help but think: Where were those people for the past 30 years? But he knows there are others out there too—people who benefited from accusing him of a crime they knew he hadn’t committed. Chief among them is John Gonsalves.

As our conversation meandered over a sunny afternoon, Ian allowed himself to wonder about Gonsalves. What must it be like for him now, to know that the lie didn’t hold? If the brothers ever did confront him, what would he say?

He continued, “This Court does not believe that any jury would now convict Christopher Dunn.” And yet, Missouri law prevented him from granting Dunn’s petition. Innocence alone, Hickle wrote, is grounds for relief only for a prisoner “sentenced to death, and is unavailable for cases in which the death penalty has not been imposed.” In other words: Dunn might have gone free, if only he’d been condemned to die.

By Maurice Chammah

I’ve been in a lot of conversations lately in which a two-word phrase is spoken — ”true crime” — and then, during the ensuing beat of silence, everyone reads the room and modulates their reactions based on the expressions of everyone else. Or maybe it’s just me. For some, the phrase simply sparks exclamations and recommendations, stories of late nights spent binging The Jinx or I’ll Be Gone in the Dark. But others wince, because no matter how sophisticated the storytelling or agreeable the politics, an icky aftertaste remains.

On the other hand, as lawyer and podcast host Rabia Chaudry recently pointed out to the New York Times, the genre can also invite more scrutiny of the justice system. Over the last five years, while writing a book about the death penalty, and a narrative story about a controversial murder investigation, I’ve noticed that our debates sometimes fail to articulate that when we say “true crime,” we’re really talking about a huge variety of story types, one of which is especially good at taking readers right to the heart of important policy questions. 

I’ll call it the “Wrongful Conviction Story,” a subgenre of true crime that examines the failures of police, courts, and other government actors, and questions whether they’ve caught and punished the correct person. I’m not calling it the “Innocence Story,” because “wrongful” is a subjective adjective, implying an argument is being made, while “innocence” implies the writer can fully prove the objective truth, which, usually, they can’t. These stories aren’t necessarily out to answer whether someone is guilty or innocent. They’re about the failures of a system that ensnares millions of Americans each year, innocent and guilty. 

A few years ago, I heard another writer say that magazine editors didn’t want these stories anymore, because they were no longer “surprising” to readers. That may be overstated, but it is true that journalists need to keep innovating in terms of how we build narratives if we’re going to get readers to follow us into a system full of misery, pain, and jargon like “voir dire” and “Brady violation,” showing them the real thing rather than the tidy heroes-and-villains worlds of Law & Order and NCIS.

I’ve collected a handful of my favorite examples of the Wrongful Conviction Story. Each represents a further slice of the subgenre, along with other stories I think are worth your attention if you want to go deeper, whether because you’re a fellow journalist, a lawyer (very much a profession in which one tells stories), or just a curious reader.

Bloodstain Analysis Convinced a Jury She Stabbed Her 10-Year-Old Son. Now, Even Freedom Can’t Give Her Back Her Life. (Pamela Colloff, ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, December 2018)

Pamela Colloff didn’t invent the wrongful conviction magazine story, but she did perfect it. While working for Texas Monthly, ProPublica, and The New York Times Magazine, she’s figured out how to foreground action and build characters efficiently, so that you can slip into the pool with her protagonists and feel their panic as they start to drown. One of her lesser-known tales concerns Julie Rea, a single mother convicted of killing her 10-year-old son Joel, based on faulty analysis of blood at the crime scene. We learn about “blood spatter” but spend most of our time on Rea’s four traumas: losing her son, being falsely convicted, going to prison, and trying to make her way again in the free world. 

In the wake of the murder, she could not bear to be alone. Terrified of the dark, she rarely slept. She stayed in an apartment an hour-and-a-half’s drive away, in Bloomington, Indiana, where she had been commuting to Indiana University’s Ph.D. program. There, a rotation of friends stayed with her around the clock. “To fall asleep, I had to have someone on either side of me and the lights on,” she said.

Reasonable Doubt (Maya Dukmasova, Chicago Reader, August 2021)

It’s pretty bold to make the second word of your article your own name, but anyone who has listened to Serial understands that it can be valuable for the journalist to present him or herself as a first-person narrator. I’d been struggling with whether this was worth doing in my own writing, and I was impressed with how Maya Dukmasova utilized her own ambivalence — and the more freewheeling prose style typical of alt-weeklies like the Chicago Reader — to propel the reader into her tale of a potentially innocent Illinois prisoner. She also goes meta, discussing  Janet Malcolm’s seminal book The Journalist and the Murderer and the sticky ethics of reporting on someone who tells you they’re innocent. You say you believe them, but both of you may be lying. 

Publishing a story someone doesn’t want out there is an act of betrayal even if you have no relationship to them. As a journalist, especially a white one, the way you justify it to yourself is by saying that the story is bigger than its central character, that his life experiences aren’t really just his to publicize or keep private, that they belong to everyone. This line of thinking is particularly potent when you’ve already invested significant time and energy into a story—as though with that expenditure you’ve purchased a person’s right to refuse or consent to be written about. I’d done a lot of digging by then. I decided to keep going, partially because it felt too late to turn back, and also because I believed what happened to Allen was wrong, even if I didn’t fully believe him.

The Sniff Test (Peter Andrey Smith, Science, October 2021)

Stories about the court system’s failures are generally best when they focus on people, but this story artfully foregrounds a canine character, exploring the dubious science of “cadaver dogs” as the latest of the forensic disciplines that judges, lawyers, and researchers are finding lack any real scientific backing. Many such stories look at trials from the distant past, but Peter Andrey Smith manages to capture multiple timelines while also centering a tragic Colorado case that is very much happening now and features a duel between a star expert witness and the Innocence Project lawyers questioning her claims. 

Behind a dog’s leathery, wet nose lies a cavernous labyrinth of scroll-shaped chambers called ethmoturbinates lined with some 200 million olfactory receptors, encoded by an estimated 2.5 times as many genes as in humans. In recent years, researchers studying canine cognition have shown pet dogs can sniff out minute quantities of odorants, such as the odor of their owner’s T-shirt after it has been worn.

How the Unchecked Power of Judges Is Hurting Poor Texans (Neena Satija, Texas Monthly, September 2019)

On the other hand: If a writer is too focused on the people (or the dogs), they may miss the big picture dynamics. When an innocent person goes to prison, it’s a failure of multiple people and institutions. I love how Neena Satija uses a single assault charge — a more common crime than murder, the typical focus of wrongful conviction stories — to help us understand the problems of money, favoritism, and red tape that surround how people who can’t afford to pay for lawyers get represented, or not represented. 

A 58-year-old with strawberry-blond hair and thin glasses, [Ray] Espersen was one of Austin’s most prolific lawyers: the previous year he’d been paid for work on 331 felonies and 275 misdemeanors in Travis County, as well as 46 felonies in neighboring Williamson County—more cases than nearly any other Austin-area attorney. … [Marvin] Wilford did not know this. What he did know was that … Espersen didn’t seem to be listening. The visitation room was tiny, and the two sat practically knee to knee, but “he was looking at the floor, scratching his head, looking everywhere but at me,” Wilford recalled.

Drawings from Prison (Valentino Dixon, Golf Digest, May 2012)

Did you hear the one about the golf magazine that helped free a man from prison? While serving a long sentence for murder, Valentino Dixon grew obsessed with drawing golf courses, which caught the attention of Golf Digest. But the editors there also found his conviction suspicious, and they dug in. Dixon is now free, and the original article about his case involves a fascinating juxtaposition of hard-nosed criminal justice reporting and Dixon’s honest, intimate account of finding mental solace through his ordeal by drawing greens, holes, and trees. 

I’ve never hit a golf ball. I’ve never set foot on a golf course. Everything I draw is from inside a 6-by-10 prison cell. The first course I ever drew was for warden James Conway. He would often stop by my cell to ask how my appeal was going and to see my drawings. Before he retired, the warden brought me a photograph of the 12th hole at Augusta National and asked if I could draw it for him. … The look of a golf hole spoke to me. It seemed peaceful. I imagine playing it would be a lot like fishing.

I’m Sorry (Kyle Zirpolo as told to Debbie Nathan, Los Angeles Times, October 2005)

It’s sad to say, but many readers now shrug when they see a headline like “Innocent Person Freed” because the phenomenon feels so common. The stories told about these cases can fall into patterns and cliches that lose readers. One solution is to focus not on the story of the wrongfully accused, but on someone else involved in the case. Reporter Debbie Nathan was even more creative, ceding the voice of her story almost entirely over to Kyle Zirpolo: a young man who, as a child, had accused adults of sexual crimes, but later realized he’d been pressured by the authorities to invent the stories. Nathan follows up his account with the backstory of why he came forward.

Anytime I would give them an answer that they didn’t like, they would ask again and encourage me to give them the answer they were looking for. It was really obvious what they wanted. I know the types of language they used on me: things like I was smart, or I could help the other kids who were scared.

The Murders at the Lake (Mike Hall, Texas Monthly, April 2014)

I remember vividly sitting in a coffee shop in Austin as the sun set, squinting and ignoring my stomach growls while I inhaled each twist in Mike Hall’s story about a murder mystery and the many lives consumed in its wake. There are questions around forensic science and the behavior of prosecutors, but Hall keeps casting his camera in new directions, novelistically accreting details and tapping true-crime conventions to lead us towards ineffable questions of time, tragedy, and justice. 

[David] Spence insisted he couldn’t remember murdering anyone, but he began to wonder if it was possible that he had really done it. 

“Did I kill them kids?” 

“I think you did,” said the deputy.

“Why don’t I know?”

Dead Certainty (Kathryn Schulz, The New Yorker, January 2016)

Let’s end this on a note of caution. For every somber reporting project, there’s some juicy content that uses the tools and stylistic modes of journalism, but lets either entertainment or advocacy take precedence. I’ve returned maybe a dozen times to Kathryn Schulz’s essay on Making a Murderer, which explores why journalists, filmmakers, and others have grown comfortable questioning the verdicts of the courts, and what the costs of this can be, especially for the grieving families at the center of these cases. 

Yet the most obvious thing to say about true-crime documentaries is something that, surprisingly often, goes unsaid: They turn people’s private tragedies into public entertainment. If you have lost someone to violent crime, you know that, other than the loss itself, few things are as painful and galling as the daily media coverage, and the license it gives to strangers to weigh in on what happened. That experience is difficult enough when the coverage is local, and unimaginable when a major media production turns your story into a national pastime.

***

Maurice Chammah is a staff writer at The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the U.S. criminal justice system. He was on a team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. His first book, Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty, was published by Crown in 2021 and won the J. Anthony Lukas Work-In-Progress Book Award. A former Fulbright fellow in Cairo, he also plays the violin and is an assistant editor at American Short Fiction. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Editor: Cheri Lucas Rowlands

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Shaheen Pasha | Longreads | April 2020 | 18 minutes (4,587 words)

I received the call at work from Tariq’s brother. I knew him briefly, had seen him as a kid, but aside from a few conversations here and there, we were virtual strangers. I couldn’t really even picture his face as his voice came across the line, hesitant, slightly unsure, a little defiant. It’s hard to imagine I had such a powerful connection to one man, and yet his brother, the person closest to him, was more of a name than a person.

“Tariq has been arrested,” his brother said to me, before his voice choked up into sobs, all his bravado vanished. I sat down in my chair with its slightly wobbly back, and dropped the handbag I had just hung on my shoulder, ready to catch my bus home from Jersey City.

“What did they arrest him for?” I said, my voice oddly calm even though it felt like my throat was closing. Drugs, maybe? He didn’t do hard drugs, that I knew. But maybe he had been caught up in the overly zealous drug war at the turn of the new millennium, when marijuana was considered the gateway to all evils.

Or maybe it was a fight at a club. That would make sense. Tariq thrived on a good fight, weaving in and out like a boxer, assessing his opponents’ strengths and weaknesses. It was something we argued about incessantly when we were together. One of many things.

But I knew before he even said it. Somehow, I knew. I had seen it in a dream, a sick twisted nightmare I’d had as a teenager in my dorm room all those years ago. Tariq had woken up and put his arm around me as I whimpered in my sleep. “Hey, you okay?” he said, still half asleep. I nodded and buried my head against his chest. “Just a bad dream,” I said. “I don’t really remember.” He was asleep, anyway, before the last words left my mouth.

I did remember. Good God, I’ve never forgotten it. A courtroom. A jury of mostly white men and women staring at me. A faceless man, some kind of a lawyer, standing in front of me. Me in a box, trying not to look at Tariq as I testified on his behalf. “Please don’t give him the death penalty,” I said to the stone-faced jurors in my dream. “I can’t imagine a world that he’s not in.”

It was a vision that came to pass a handful of years later, in 2005, down to the slightly sweaty wood paneling under my fingers as I gripped the edge of the witness box to keep them from shaking. But I didn’t know it at the time of the dream. Maybe I wouldn’t have told him then even if I had known. It was the first time and, as it turned out, the last time we had ever spent the whole night together. Good Pakistani Muslim girls didn’t spend the night with a boy, after all. I felt daring, rebellious and completely happy. I didn’t want to taint it with the imagery of a ruined life. I wanted our perfect night to remain just that.

So I just watched him sleep. He looked younger than his 19 years when he slept. All the hardness that would sometimes creep across his face was gone in his sleep. He even smiled a little, untroubled by nightmares.

I should have told him.

I should have told him.

“Double homicide.” His brother’s voice snapped me back to the present. His voice suddenly collapsed within itself, shaky breaths substituting words, creating a language of grief that could only be understood by the two of us.

In books, I’ve always read that the world stops when a person delivers horrible news. Time stands still. You can feel the air. Everything goes on hold. That’s not the reality, of course. My co-worker shouted a goodbye to me from across her cubicle as she packed up her computer. Phones rang, people laughed. Life went on.

Except it never really did for me again. Not in the same way. That call changed everything. It initiated me into a painful fraternity of those impacted by the trauma of mass incarceration. And 17 years later, the pain lives on and nothing has gone back to the way it was before. What would have happened if I hadn’t stopped to pick up the phone? I was already walking away from my desk, pulling out crackers from my coat pocket to curb the new nausea of my first pregnancy.

I wonder if life would have taken its natural course. Tariq and I had broken up two years earlier, when I was 22. It was sad and heart-wrenching at the time, but not unexpected given how young we were. Our relationship would have been a memory of first love to be cherished and stored away. A tale to tell my Pakistani-American grandkids in my old age when it was long past scandalous.

I was now married to a Pakistani-Canadian man who had swept me off my feet in a matter of months. It was a suitable relationship with a suitable young man who ticked off the boxes of propriety in my Pakistani immigrant community: Muslim, educated, handsome. And, to top it off, we were in love. It was a new relationship filled with promise.

I was pregnant with our first child. She was a little speck of a human being inside me. I’d been consumed with delight since I had seen those two blue lines just two weeks earlier.

Career, marriage, baby.

Done, done, done.

Normal. Mundane. The life I had been planning since I was a little girl.

This phone call was not part of the plan.

The first shrill ring. Let it go to voicemail, I said to myself walking away. I’ll tackle whatever it is when I come back to work tomorrow.

A second ring, slightly more demanding in tone, if that’s possible. I hesitated. What if it’s my husband or my mom? Nonsense, they’d call you on your cell phone. You’ll miss the bus.

Third ring. What if something is wrong? Sigh. I walked back to my desk and picked up the receiver.

As it turned out, something was terribly wrong.

***

Tariq and I were childhood sweethearts in the most platonic, unlabeled way possible. Passed notes in the hallway and a squeeze of the hand as we passed each other’s lockers. He was an annoying football jock in high school. I was the socially conscious student newspaper nerd. He was always surrounded by other girls. I was always surrounded by my mother’s voice.

“He’s a jackass,” I told my best friend one day, as we saw him whispering into a girl’s ear, sending her into fits of giggles.

“He’s a cute jackass,” she responded.

“Not my type,” I scoffed.

“Maybe not, but do you even know what your type is?”

It was an accurate observation. Growing up in my Muslim household, dating and sex were simply not an option. So, having a type seemed like an unnecessary exercise in self-torture. And even if I did, I knew I had an innate distrust of men and relationships, so any “type” would be questionable at best.

My father was a handsome, charming man who could light up a room with his smile, who never raised his voice unless he was belting out melodies that would melt the hearts of everyone present. I was the closest to him in our family and I loved him completely. He was also a paranoid schizophrenic who refused to take his medication properly, and spent years staring at the walls of our apartments when he wasn’t knocking on them to check for cameras and other hidden devices. He was the moon in phases.

My mother, on the other hand, was the rock of the family. The matriarch who held my siblings and me together through sheer willpower and the occasional reliance on food stamps. She cared for my father through his worst bouts of mental illness, grinding up his medicine to hide within his food, tricking him back to sanity. She ignored his delusions and internalized his repeated reproaches that she was the reason he was ill, and a failure, and trapped within the prison of his own mind. When I looked at her, I saw a caretaker and savior who shouldered the blame of another person’s life.

It was not the best roadmap of a relationship to carry into my own dating life.

And it didn’t matter anyway. My mother was modern enough to promise me that I wouldn’t be subjected to an arranged marriage, like she had been. But just how I was supposed to marry for love when I couldn’t even stand too close to a boy was a question I kept trying to puzzle out.

“You will make a friend with a boy and one day that friend will decide that he wants to bring you into his family, and he will ask you to marry him,” my mother explained to me. “All of this dating stuff with the holding hands and the shame-shame is unnecessary. When you are ready for marriage, he will come. But he has to be Pakistani. And Muslim. And educated. And from a good family. That’s all.”

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I tried to explain this to Tariq as we sat in the far corner of the school library one afternoon in my senior year of high school. “I’m already your friend,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “And Pakistani and Muslim. What’s the problem?”

“Yes, but you’re asking me to be your girlfriend and I can only get involved with someone if it leads to marriage,” I shot back. “Those are the rules.”

“So, marry me,” he responded, flippantly, and without hesitation. “I’m 18 already. You’ll be 18 in a few months. We’ll go to college together, we’ll start a life together. I don’t see a problem with that. You and me, mama, we’re tied together somehow, anyway. I think we always will be.”

Eight years later, behind a dirty plexiglass window, smeared with sweaty fingerprints and other questionable bodily fluids, he sighed and smiled at me sadly. His left hand clutched the phone receiver and the knuckles of his right hand gently rapped on the glass between us.

“You know, you should have just married me.”

***

It was the shadow in my marriage. I covertly watched my husband as he sat across from me, working on his computer, while I fed my two-year-old daughter. The silence stretched across the expanse of the dining room table. It was a silence that was slightly preferable to the louder arguments that seemed to be so common in those days. Yelling matches that would be triggered by the smallest provocation.

“You forgot to pick up our daughter from my mom’s house when I was working late,” I would say.

“I got busy at work,” he’d reply, not even looking up from his computer.

“Yeah, but if I’m traveling or working, I need you to take care of her,” I’d respond back, my voice rising. “She deserves a father who is there for her without being told that it’s his job.”

“Well, you seem to make it your job to take care of everyone whether they deserve it or not,” he’d respond.

Fight triggered.

I sat there watching his face. Did he have a bad day at work? Was he going to be angry or spiteful? Did I need to put my daughter in her room with her canopy bed and Barbie princess lamp before I started speaking? But no, he was laughing at something he was reading onscreen. I took my shot.

“Tariq’s brother wants me to come with his family to meet their lawyers,” I said, rushing my words as I spooned rice and daal into my daughter’s mouth, my eyes never looking up.

His fingers stopped mid-type. “Why?” he asked, his eyebrows starting to furrow together. “He was convicted, it’s done with.”

“They want to interview character witnesses for his sentencing,” I said, still looking intently at my daughter who was now engrossed in lining up her colored pencils on the wood table. Red pencil, green pencil, yellow pencil, blue pencil. Neat and orderly.

“Oh, that’s right. He’s a death penalty case. You know, what he did to those two people calls for death. An eye for an eye,” he said sitting back, his eyes on me, watchful.

I sighed and looked up. We both knew what he was waiting for: my angry denial of my friend’s guilt, my emotional defense of his innocence, my tirade against the justice system for Muslims in a post-9/11 world, my insistence that he should have been allowed the DNA test or the cell phone records he had asked for to prove his case, rather than letting the system railroad a man with no previous criminal record based on the highly questionable and hole-ridden testimony of a cast of characters who had been given deals in return for their cooperation.

Have you ever considered that he actually did it, my husband would say, every time.

Of course, I have, I would shoot back. But there are too many things that don’t add up. The timeline of his whereabouts is wrong, and a witness saw someone who was taller and whiter than he was. Besides, I know him. He’s capable of many stupid things. But he’s not capable of that.

He’d scoff, I’d yell, my daughter would look up from her pencils, eyes wide and hurt, before she took cover by switching on the television, losing herself in The Incredibles, where the Mommy and Daddy were superheroes who loved each other rather than two angry villains who could barely tolerate one another.

So I held myself back. “I’m not asking,” I said quietly. “I’m just telling you that I’m going to testify on his behalf.”

My husband shrugged his shoulders. “Of course, you aren’t,” he replied, closing his computer. “You do what you want to do anyway. And when it comes to him, his needs will always come before mine. Why can’t you just let it go?”

“I’ve known Tariq since I was 15!” I said. “I met and married you in four months. How do you expect me to just turn my back on one of my best friends, someone I grew up with?”

“Exactly. I met you and chose to marry you! I chose you,” he said. “He made choices too. Whether you believe he actually did it or not, his choices led him down this path, and sometimes you have to pay for bad decisions and people you bring into your life.”

“You’re not perfect,” I said, picking up my daughter’s plate, as she hopped off of the table, seeking refuge.

“No, I’m not,” my husband replied sighing. “Neither is he. Except he’s the only one between the two of us who you can forgive for not being perfect. Go help your friend. I’m waiting for the day when there stops being another man in this marriage.”

A few weeks later, I sat in the witness box, the sweaty wood paneling familiar under my fingertips. My eyes scanned the courtroom, caught up in a surreal déjà vu. It was the scene of my nightmare all those years ago. Except now it was very real, and I couldn’t wake up from it. The lawyer asked me questions and the jurors avoided my eyes. It was one thing to convict a man based on shoddy, circumstantial evidence, I thought. It was a completely different story to have to decide whether that man would live or die.

One of the jurors, a middle-aged white woman with glasses, sniffled into her tissue as I talked about my friend, the man I knew, who was so at odds with the stranger the prosecution had described. The sound set my teeth on edge, so I focused on Tariq. He looked thin and broken, his eyes holding mine as I talked about his humor and generosity, how he looked out for me when we were kids. I glanced back at the jury box when Tariq’s gaze became too painful to hold. The jurors seemed bored, or maybe reluctant to hear any positive words about the man they had decided was a heartless murderer.

Then his lawyer passed around a picture of us from my wedding — an uncomfortable affair for me in some ways, when Tariq showed up unexpectedly to watch me marry another man. But the jury didn’t need to know that. They wakened from their stupor briefly and looked down at the photo, a snapshot of a very real human being with a life and identity beyond that of a monster, a label they had placed on him.

In the photo, we were smiling. My husband, young and handsome, in a white sherwani coat and pants. Tariq dignified in a black suit and tie. And me in a coral-colored wedding lengha, laden with gold and diamonds and flowers, sandwiched between two men who loved me.

The photo was entered into evidence and I never saw it again. As it was slipped into a clear plastic bag, I choked back tears.

Somehow, I felt like I had lost them both.

***

When I was a little girl I used to look for the stars. It was hard to see any from our dingy, one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment. But I had a children’s book by Carl Sagan that showed a map of the constellations. I knew that behind the clouds and the light pollution of New York was a sky full of stars, bright and infinite. A pathway to God.

My brother, older by five years and knowledgeable about everything, pointed out a few of the constellations he knew. “That’s the Big Dipper,” he said, tracing his finger across the page. “And over here, you can see Orion. And you see those three stars in a line? That’s called the Belt of Orion.”

I looked eagerly at the picture. Three stars for three siblings. Always connected, a stable force in our unstable universe. In my child’s mind, the sun came to represent my mother, warm and providing life, but sometimes fiery and out of reach. And the moon was always my father, mysterious, and beautiful, and dark, and ever changing. My celestial family.

Stargazing became my secret refuge, a meditation to ground myself in my tumultuous world. After the phone call from Tariq’s brother, I drove down to my parents’ house in Central New Jersey and parked near a farmhouse where the view of the sky was uninhibited. It was cold that night but largely clear. I stepped out of the car and walked close to the open field, searching for the Belt of Orion. My constellation. But clouds had suddenly gathered across the night sky, obstructing my view. The stars had failed me.

I never stopped looking up, though. Not after the phone call, and the conviction, and the endless stream of denied appeals. Not after my beautiful daughter was officially diagnosed with autism, her love of creating order suddenly taking on a more insidious meaning that I had been too distracted to notice. Not when my marriage disintegrated and rebuilt itself a hundred times, held together by a fragile thread of love that still bound us together. Not after my father passed away peacefully in his sleep, the tumultuous voices in his head and the societal shame we carried over his mental illness released with his last breath. I still gazed up at the stars and kept on going.

And then came the night my third child was born early. Too early, at 23 weeks. Weighing only one pound and translucent, his birth ravaged my body and I slipped in and out of consciousness on the surgical table, my vitals dropping. The lights overhead seemed to twinkle like a star as I began to let go, ready to sleep. It was as if the stars were finally calling me home.

My husband brought me back, though, refusing to let go. He never lets me go. But I was tired, so tired of the pain and trauma that I had endured in my relatively short life.

I explained this to Tariq a few years later. Our voices echoed a little across the prison phone line, slightly distorted. But he could understand me. He always understood me.

“I was just so tired,” I said. “I didn’t want to tell my family or my friends or anyone else because they would be heartbroken. But I was done at that point. I just wanted it to end on that table. I wanted to slip away, putting down all of the burdens I kept inside. But that didn’t happen. And I’m still here, and I’m just so tired. It just feels so unfair.”

“I know how that feels,” he said, his voice still young, even though I knew his hair and the beard he grew in prison had turned a silvery gray. “You still believe in me, but so many people have either forgotten about me or choose to believe I’m the monster the state made me out to be. My innocence doesn’t matter to anyone because I’m in prison for 127 years. And this place takes away your dignity. That’s what it is created to do. It can make you a little less human if you let it. The things I see here, the things we experience, I can’t really tell people who love me. It would hurt them too much, so I hold it in. And I get tired.

“There are days, Shaheen, when I think about what it would be like to be done,” he continued “But we don’t have that option. It’s all unfair, but life isn’t fair. Haven’t you figured that out yet? We keep going because it has to mean something more than this. My faith, our faith, promises us that, and while I don’t always feel it, I know it’s true. There has to be more than this and that’s why we keep going even when we want to stop. Your daughter’s name means faith, right? You need to have some.”

I smiled into the receiver in spite of myself. “You know you should write an advice column or something,” I said. “Or write your experiences down and share them with people outside. I think they would get something out of it.”

“I’m not a writer,” he responded, “but maybe I will.”

“Maybe, I’ll help you,” I said.

He laughed. “So, are you going to follow my advice?”

“Yeah, it seems like I’m always following you anyway.”

“Well, of course, you do. My name is Tariq. It means the North Star. Everyone follows the North Star.”

***

In 2019, 17 years after that first phone call, I joined the faculty of Penn State to launch the Prison Journalism Project with my partner, Yukari Iwatani Kane, a journalist and educator like me, who serves as the advisor to the San Quentin News. The project came out of an original vision to teach incarcerated men and women how to do journalism — news and memoir — from behind prison walls.

It started as a voluntary endeavor, fueled in part by our desire to make a difference in the lives of the over 2.3 million people incarcerated in the United States today. It was a chance to teach people how to voice their trauma and share their stories and the stories of their loved ones, who had lost so much to a mass incarceration system gone out of control.

It was a chance for the outside world to understand what it felt like to be separated from those they loved, confined to a small space. None of us expected that the deadly pandemic would bring some of those lessons home to the world.

I stood in my kitchen watching my children play in the backyard through the window when my cell phone rang. The robotic voice on the other end told me I had a call waiting from an “inmate at New Jersey State Prison.” It was a call I had been waiting for as my worries mounted amid news of prison lockdowns and the rising number of COVID-19 cases inside facilities across the country.

“I keep hearing people on television say that social isolation feels like being in prison,” Tariq said after assuring me he was safe and still healthy. “They talk about how hard it is to be inside all the time, to have their movements restricted, to be unable to be there with their loved ones, especially when tragedy strikes. It’s a surreal feeling that I know all too well. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. But it’s not the same thing, not even close.”

“I know,” I started saying before he cut me off.

“No, you can’t know and I don’t want you to know. Ever. Out there, you’re still human. Inside here, the lack of contact can drive you crazy. COs who used to pat you down for no reason, now are afraid to touch you like you’re toxic, even though they’re the ones more likely to get us sick. The guys inside are on edge without any kind of protection in such close quarters and tempers are flaring. It’s bad enough we can’t see or hug our loved ones because visits are canceled. But now even something as simple as a handshake between us is off limits. The lack of basic human touch really messes with you. Sitting in your cell, you wind up feeling like a ghost, except we’re not dead yet.”

I sat in silence, not sure what words I could offer. In the background, I could hear the sounds of my children laughing as they chased each other in the sun — socially isolated but still free. Across the phone line I heard Tariq laugh as he heard them shouting.

“Are you scared?” I asked finally.

“I’m worried about the people I care about. My family, my friends, you and your family, but I’m not scared for myself. I’ve been a ghost for a long time. I just hope that our voices inside don’t get forgotten when life gets back to normal. Make sure your project doesn’t let us be forgotten. Don’t let me be forgotten.”

It’s a promise I intend to keep.

Looking ahead, when I talk about the project to students in my classes, I know I will inevitably give them the hard, clinical statistics. The United States is home to five percent of the world’s population, yet nearly 25 percent of all prisoners. One in four American adults has had a sibling incarcerated. One in five has had a parent sent to jail or prison. One in eight has had a child incarcerated, and 6.5 million adults have an immediate family member currently in jail or prison.

They don’t run statistics when it comes to people like me, who may not be blood relatives but are family all the same. I can only imagine the figures would be staggering.

And as I tick off the statistics, I’ll wait for the question. It always comes. A hand will go up, sometimes a male student. Sometimes female.

“How did you get involved in this kind of work? Why did you decide to do this?” the student will ask.

I’ll smile and lean against the podium.

“Let me tell you all a story.”

* * *

Shaheen Pasha is an assistant teaching professor at Penn State University and the co-founder of the Prison Journalism Project. Pasha has been a journalist for over 20 years and her work has appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, CNNMoney, Thomson Reuters, Narratively and the Dallas Morning News.

Editor: Sari Botton

Shawn Shinneman | Longreads | November 2017 | 23 minutes (5,753 words)

Richard Miles has no preternatural pull toward stuff, but after he received his compensation from the state of Texas for a wrongful conviction, he did make one purchase of minor extravagance: a majestic-looking chess set, which he had installed at the entryway to his Duncanville, Texas, home. This is what greets his guests: a wooden board checkered in alternating shades of stain, fit with a hand-chiseled animal kingdom (a few bishop-giraffes now missing ears), sitting in a floodlit display case. The base of the display is solid wood, painted a soft white and about the size of an oven. Atop that, the board rests on a circular platform, about six inches tall and fitted with a small motor. In theory, it rotates. In actuality, the function remains turned off. When it’s engaged, the board spins too swiftly, and kings and their men veer off and collapse.

To Miles, the game of chess is the game of life: You have to be on the move while thinking ahead. A chess player should be simultaneously offensive and defensive, productive while defending what’s theirs. Miles developed a taste for the game in prison. “It was either checkers, chess, dominoes — or you’re talking about somebody,” he says.

More than a dozen years into Miles’ sentence, he learned the prosecution had been playing cards with a trick deck. He was freed in 2009. Three years later, when he was fully exonerated of the murder and aggravated assault for which he’d been put away, the state of Texas’ apology came in the form of a $1.2 million check. Now come monthly annuity payments totaling $71,000 a year. As of this writing, the state has paid Miles about $1.5 million.

Those numbers, however, tell a slanted tale. Like most prisoners who do substantial time, exonerees depart life behind bars for an intimidating new world. Things like completing menial tasks and finding and keeping a job — not to mention the prospects of building a  fulfilling career and life — prove difficult. But unlike most prisoners who do substantial time, exonerees often don’t have access to the various re-entry resources that await convicts. That can make the process seem a bit like receiving a good luck slap on the back and a check to take home.

People who have been wrongfully imprisoned experience a unique type of mental fallout. A few years ago, when a dozen Dallas exonerees agreed to check in with a psychiatrist, all 12, including Miles, were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Not one was found mentally healthy, and not one has since received serious treatment. Various family members have expressed differing levels of concern about Miles’ state of mind, and his mother’s assessment has been painfully blunt: “A part of him is still dead,” she says one afternoon, “still incarcerated.”

For some of Miles’ exoneree brethren in other states, financial reparations and even the detached sense of regret that accompanies them remain a pipe dream. Texas — Red Texas — has one of the most progressive compensation laws in America, and yet it’s difficult to tell whether the money is spurring mental or emotional recovery. Even a king can topple from a spinning foundation. At different moments, in different lights, the compensation granted to Miles can seem either extraordinarily beneficial or, given the enduring impact of wrongful incarceration, remarkably futile.

* * *

Miles has fed his compensation into a few different ways. He bought a house for himself and another for his mom, he made a sizable tithe to help remodel his late father’s church and he put a 2011 Jaguar XJL in his garage. He then took $150,000 and started a nonprofit he named Miles of Freedom.

Several well-compensated exonerees have ended up pursuing nonprofit work, but Miles chose not to cater his organization exclusively to exonerees. He has aimed his assistance at all those struggling with re-entry, keeping close to heart his brothers behind bars. One hazy Texas winter afternoon, Miles was working his way toward the Dallas campus of Texas A&M University–Commerce to speak to a group he hoped could help him expand Miles of Freedom’s reach and resources. It was a social work class taught by Jaimie Page, who was instrumental in unifying exonerees to fight for increased compensation. Page invited Miles so he and her students could compare notes, with the goal that they could set a more robustly funded path forward.

Miles was optimistic about what the meeting could bring. The refreshing thing about Page was that she didn’t seem to want anything out of Miles, or Johnnie Lindsey, or Christopher Scott — guys who in the drop of a gavel had gone from convicted killers and rapists to innocent men, in certain eyes, something entirely different: dollar signs. Page has more than once turned down money from exonerees for her help. Now, she was inviting Miles to her classroom not as Guy Who Had Bad Thing Happen to Him, but as the head of an organization.

One of the central struggle in Miles’ first life was rooted in a yearning to experience the freedom outside his sheltered upbringing, and in his second he grappled with a stinging guilt associated with his conviction. The tension of his third is in a search for an identity deeper than Richard Miles, exoneree. Turning out of his South Dallas office in a black Cadillac CTS (he bought it after seeing the bill for his first bit of maintenance on the Jag), he was feeling good.

One of the first things Miles had done when he had gotten out was enroll in college. Still awaiting his compensation at the time, he had lived on student aid. He hadn’t known how to use a computer, which had been embarrassing, and he had taken a public speaking course, which had been terrifying. But from the latter he gained confidence, and he was soon telling his story over and over — in classrooms, conferences and on a book tour. That story ends well: Miles has been let out of prison and is now in front of you, speaking. This is remarkable and inspiring. But that basic narrative suggests no plan of action. No purpose. Our feature presentation, The Life of Richard Miles, has now ended. Enjoy your evening.

“I think now, more so it’s trying to walk away with a plan,” he says in the car. “That makes me have to study more. It makes me kind of forget about myself.”

Miles arrives early for class. He’s directed to wait in the library, where he settles momentarily and then gets up and paces the hallways talking on his cell phone.

By the time Page gets there, he’s been on three separate calls with Aubrey Jones, his wise and always beaming former prison-mate, now his right-hand man at Miles of Freedom. In class, he sits up front in a black blazer, a silver watch showing, chic as usual. At about 1 p.m., Page calls class to order and introduces her guest, turning to Miles. “So,” she says warmly, “maybe you can start with a little bit about your story.”

* * *

May 16, 1994, early morning: A couple of minutes after 19-year-old Miles is dropped off near the neighborhood in which he’s staying, he crosses the street in front of a stopped police car and suddenly finds himself under the glow of a helicopter’s beam. Ground police appear in flocks, surround Miles and arrest him. Not far away, at a Texaco gas station near Dallas’ Bachman Lake, two men have been shot several times at close range. One is dead. The other will be permanently disabled. A witness has told dispatchers the shooter is wearing something similar to Miles’ attire.

Still, even sitting in the back of the police car, Miles isn’t nervous. He figures the cops will call the people he’s been with all evening, realize he’s telling the truth and release him. Trying to elicit a confession, Detective B.J. Hooker spends 10 hours in and out of questioning Miles, whose premonition is partially correct: The police call the alibis, and the alibis check out.

As the day wears on, the police charge him anyway.

There’s hardly any evidence to convict. Under closer examination, Miles’ clothes don’t quite match the description. He’d been in dark-blue Dickies pants; witnesses say the shooter was wearing dark-colored shorts. He had on a black derby hat with a rigid felt brim and a feather; the shooter was described as wearing a “floppy” hat. (Miles’ hat would disappear before trial.) Miles is light skinned and about 5 foot 6, relatively short; the shooter is said to be tall and dark skinned. Seven witnesses are shown a photo lineup of Miles and five others. In it, Miles is the only one wearing a white tank top, which matches the description of the shooter. Only Marcus Thurman identifies Miles. Thurman, whose initial description to cops had led to Miles’ arrest, had still been at the Texaco that morning when police, in an odd move, brought Miles to the scene, took him out of the car and swabbed his hands for gunshot residue. Thurman got a look at Miles then, before his positive ID during the photo lineup. Prior to taking the stand—he will later say—Thurman is coached as to the defendant’s whereabouts in the courtroom. He serves as the prosecution’s star witness, pointing to Miles as the killer. Lab tech Vicki Hall’s testimony stretches the significance of trace levels of residue — minuscule enough to be found in the dirt — that show up on Miles’ right hand. Miles is left-handed. She will later say she would have testified differently if she had it over.

But it’s not the reversal of those two key testimonies that gets Miles out of prison; those come later, triggering his exoneration. One day in 2007, Miles is in his cell during lockdown when he gets a delivery, volumes upon volumes upon volumes: his trial transcript, the trove of valuable documents he could never afford, which had made it nearly impossible to make a compelling case for a new trial. In Miles’ world, he’s on a deserted-island quest for innocence and this is the flare gun to signal help, the thing he’d held out hope for during his darkest moments. He could change his situation, if only he could get his hands on the transcript.

In his cell, Miles works through thousands of pages over several sittings, trying to read as if he’s guilty so as to overcorrect for his own bias, a tip he acquired from a writ writer in the prison law library. The police report is here, too, but Miles saves it for last. That, he figures, he’s seen already. Except, as it turns out, this version is much different. The file provided to Centurion Ministries, the organization that has taken on Miles’ innocence case and sent him the files, is more than three times the size of the one given to William Lloyd, Miles’ father, years earlier. It contains evidence that the defense never saw, including a promising lead that appears to have been ignored by police in the pursuit of Miles. He and his lawyers hadn’t known that a woman had called police one day in May 1995, talking about a shooting at a Texaco not far from where Miles was picked up, with the time frame to match. They were about to try a man in connection, she told them, but the real shooter was her ex. She reluctantly provided the name of the suspect, Keith Richard, but did not give her own name and feared she’d be killed if her former boyfriend was questioned. She also identified the gun as a 9 mm pistol, a detail that hadn’t been publicized. Another report described an encounter the two victims had had outside a Kroger a few days before the shooting, during which the surviving victim, Robert Johnson, had threatened a man with a gun, the same one found on the floorboard of the car after the shooting, thus further discrediting Johnson’s claims in the courtroom that he was a random victim, that the gun was merely for defense and that the two had no enemies.

Already well versed on the state’s duty to disclose exculpatory evidence, Miles discovers the missing documents from inside his prison cell. A confusing mix of anger and elation envelops him. It is in this moment he knows he will be free.

On what sort of submarine explorations has Miles’ mind since embarked? He has been scared, angry, tired, and soaked in guilt. He has fought; he has prayed. He has considered what dying could do for him and how to achieve it. He has learned the key to forgetting about yourself: to account for every minute, never to be idle. Will he be able to unlearn this? More hours in law books, working in the infirmary. More hours lifting weights, playing chess. Sleep eat work eat exercise study play eat sleep. Repeat. Do not sit; do not sink. Never leave a moment free, lest reality come bubbling to the surface.

* * *

August 26, 1995, late evening: Welcome to the coldest hunk of concrete in America.

Miles had just twice heard the word “guilty.” The jury had deliberated for eight hours, a good sign, and then the foreman — a young, Black woman — rose to her feet in the courtroom and said it, and while some of the jurors wept, Miles had fallen to his chair, stood, and was carried away to this concrete slab in a holding chamber. After a long day, the chamber was otherwise clear. Miles was alone.

The truth shall set you free.

Miles’ parents stopped by. Thelma, the uplifter, mother of four, forever of hope. William, a Vietnam veteran: spiritual, serious. Dad. Miles and his older sister, LaShawnda, have a different father by blood, but it is William who raised them, along with the two boys, William and Emanuel, he and Thelma had together. The rules of his house were smothering. Miles was boisterous, a jokester. The way his classmates’ laughter fed something inside him assured his constant presence inside detention. He developed an interest in girls, and a smile. “A little lover,” Thelma calls it. Meanwhile, William’s religious vision required considerable devotion. The family participated in revivals, meaning nightly trips to the church. Home life offered little leisure. Miles yearned for more. He was not even allowed to play checkers or chess.

He had been arrested once before. That first time had been a year and a half after a fateful conversation with his father. The talk had taken place during the evening, out back behind the house. He had been sitting in William’s beat-up Chevy truck, on the wrong end of a three-hour lecture about abiding by the rules of this house so long as you live in this house. Miles decided not to live in this house. His supervisor at his job at McDonald’s, who went by L.A., offered to take him in, and a guy named Tori picked Miles up.

“Man, you know, it’s good!” Tori told Miles. “You’re moving out! You’re staying on your own!”

Tori lived with his mom.

He did not take Miles directly to L.A.’s. Instead, he took Miles to a corner, where they met a drug dealer. The group Miles would fall in with kept two hotel rooms, a place at Raw Suites Hotel — the chill-out spot — and a place across the street at the Deluxe Inn, where the transactions went down. They sold crack and smoked pot. Soon, Miles found himself entranced by this new street life. He dropped out of school late during his senior year, and the following year, on March 1, 1994, police got clearance to search the room at Raw Suites and found about half a gram of crack cocaine atop the trash can’s heap. Police did not find cash on Miles, and therefore — his lawyer suggested — he might have a chance in court. Instead, a month in, he pleaded guilty in exchange for probation, sure he’d be able to avoid further trouble. He distanced himself, he says, from the Raw Suites crew. On April 26, he turned 19. Three weeks later, everything changed.

So there were Miles’ parents. They’d always insisted that should their children get in trouble with the law, they would not be there to help. They would not put up bail or fund a lawyer. They would not visit. Miles was staring back at the owners of the home he abandoned, who raised him until he decided that their services would no longer be needed, that he was a man.

The walls were down and Miles was reduced, naked.

Under William’s faith, the family had spoken of this date in August as the endpoint, refusing to legitimize the possibility of a conviction. Once the day came, conversation rang hollow. Thelma wondered what to say. She did not want to make Miles feel as if his parents were doubting their faith in God. “But we looked at what, 80 years? 60 years?” she says now. Miles picks up on something. “My dad was like, ‘Man, your court-appointed lawyer is going to do what he’s supposed to do,’” he says. “‘The word of God says that the truth shall set — ’ So he was more like that.”

Relaying the story, 40-year-old Miles is wearing a white T-shirt, sitting on his leather couch, the light above illuminating the grays on his closely cropped head. A room over, his year-old daughter, Raelyn, starts to cry. Miles checks on her and returns.

“It was me, too,” he says. “I know I had to go to God: ‘What is this? Man, this makes no sense.’”

Miles’ lawyer, Ed Gray, had been sure the jury would show mercy — given the tears — all the way up until Miles confessed during the sentencing hearing to dealing drugs, providing the missing motive. Miles was sentenced to 40 years and 20 years, respectively, and a judge tacked on another 20 for his violation of probation. All three sentences could be served concurrently, setting his maximum sentence at 40 years. But Miles’ release would come much sooner, 15 years after his arrest, in October of 2009.

By that point, much damage had been done. Miles moved in with his mother, and Thelma Miles quickly took note of all the new traits her eldest son had acquired. He would sit very straight and still, so as to not extend outside his personal space. He would seldom leave the house, and he struggled to make friends or connect with others. When he needed to go to the bathroom, he would ask. “I’m like, ‘Richard, just get up and go!’” Thelma says. “He said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m just so — ’ ‘I know, baby, you’re just so used to it.’”

One day Miles was mowing the yard when an alarm sounded, the weekly test of the emergency system. From inside, Thelma noticed the lawnmower motor had quieted, and she stepped outside to check on her son. Miles had hopped up on the porch and snapped to attention. The alarm had transported him back to the prison yard, its strict schedule, the unforgiving guards.

Miles struggled with the college classes he’d enrolled in — although he managed to earn praise along the way from professors who knew his story. He’d taken college courses in prison, where the teachers taught. Out here, they instructed: read this, analyze that, come to class ready to discuss. The medium through which he was to study changed, too, and suddenly involved a screen. The Blackboard app was baffling. “When I left, beepers,” Miles says. “When I came back, iPhones.” His peers were warm to his story, but he quietly wondered how many times he could reasonably request simple technological assistance.

For Miles and other exonerees, struggles to assimilate into modern culture are compounded by the psychological impact of wrongful incarceration. “They feel like they’re Martians landing on Earth,” says Centurion Ministries founder Jim McCloskey, whose organization counts Miles among its 54 successful exonerations over 37 years. “It’s so difficult for any of us to really understand the pain and suffering that they’ve gone through and their psychological structure, and how they view the world and people.”

Cautionary tales abound. In 2008, CNN found Wiley Fountain — a Dallas exoneree who’d been compensated $190,000 under a prior iteration of the law — had become homeless just five years after he was released. Last year in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, police found Darryl Hunt dead in a pickup truck. A dozen years after DNA proved he wasn’t the rapist and killer who took a young life in 1984, Hunt was the victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Dallas exonerees are overwhelmingly Black and male, a demographic that, according to Page, the Texas A&M University-Commerce professor, is historically overrepresented in institutionalized mental health care and historically underrepresented in outpatient mental health care. In a society already squeamish about treating the mind, this is a population more resistant than most. When Page secured the money for evaluations, the men in the group she was working with had strict demands: The psychiatrist had to be a Black male over the age of 50, and he had to be willing to meet each of the exonerees at their individual homes. Page knew of no one, but her intern uncovered a man named Charles Mathis. He worked his way through the group and eventually diagnosed every one of them with post-traumatic stress disorder.

According to Miles, Page says it’s possible the exonerees are actually dealing with a more serious form of PTSD called C-PTSD. The C stands for “complex” and signals a more serious version resulting from long-term or repeat trauma, such as consistent sexual or physical abuse.

Either way, Mathis’ diagnoses largely did not result in treatment. Page says not a single exoneree from her group received treatment, although Miles later submitted to a couple of therapy sessions through Centurion Ministries. By and large, the men were guarded about sharing something so personal, let alone with someone who could have little grasp of the impossible emotions with which they’d dealt. “I think they’re more baffled by us,” says Miles. “The tables tend to turn.”

* * *

Across the country, the likelihood that an exoneree will be compensated in any significant way depends heavily where in the U.S. they were found guilty.

Today, 18 states don’t have any law guaranteeing exonerees compensation for the time they spent in jail. Options in those states might include arguing in front of a state commission, lobbying legislators or filing a civil claim against the state. If you win a civil claim, you could fill your bank account with $15 million or $20 million — but you’ll be in the vast minority, as winning a civil case for compensation is rare. Success is most likely for exonerees whose stories have gained national followings.

Of the states that have standards, the restitution they promise exonerees varies wildly. Most cap compensation. The state of Wisconsin provides a maximum $25,000 lump sum, about enough to buy a 2017 Honda Accord Coupe. Florida tops out at $2 million. California pays $100 per day spent behind bars, and Iowa $50.

Restrictions and caveats make an impact, too. Even after Louisiana (compensation cap: $330,000) finds reason to grant an inmate’s release, the state puts the burden of proof back on the exoneree — guilty until proven innocent — for the purposes of a payout. Under Florida’s “clean hands” provision, only exonerees with felony-free records prior to their wrongful convictions are eligible to receive compensation. One notorious case saw a man denied because of an unrelated prior felony conviction for possession of a single quaalude pill. Because of his earlier drug arrest and guilty plea, Miles, too, would’ve been stonewalled.

And the same politics that drive states not to pay exonerees are in play when it comes to freeing them in the first place. This is one explanation for why the states with the most exonerees also tend to have the most progressive compensation laws. Tom Sullivan, a defense attorney in Arkansas, says politicians in his state have long refused to see the wrongs their justice system is capable of inflicting. “We aren’t going to set up a system of compensation, because we don’t ever make errors,” he says, characterizing the attitude of legislators in his state.

Sullivan worked on the case of Arkadelphia, Arkansas, native Gyronne Buckley. In late 2013, the Arkansas Claims Commission voted to do something it had done only once before: The commission unanimously granted Buckley $460,000 for the 11 and a half years of a life sentence he served for a drug offense that was later expunged. It seemed the state was taking a step forward. But with tax dollars on the line, politics can interfere. As it happened, Arkansas’ then–Attorney General, Dustin McDaniel, rallied a legislative subcommittee to reverse the commission’s decision. Buckley, who didn’t respond to several attempts to make contact for this story, hasn’t seen a penny.

Separated by just a three-and-a-half-hour drive on I-30, the realities that greeted Miles and Buckley outside prison bars were vastly different.

In Texas, momentum to transform state policy into one of the country’s most progressive did indeed start with the state’s massive community of exonerees. Under Dallas County Prosecutor Craig Watkins, who championed a proactive approach to freeing the jailed innocent, the number of Texas exonerees inflated. They had numbers, but lacked organization and leadership. In 2007, Page volunteered for a boss’s vague offer to work with former inmates, and fell hard into the world of wrongful incarceration. She was moved by the stories of dozens of Dallas exonerees and, in time, became a trusted figure within their community.

“Here I am, a White woman trying to help a large group of these men just be able to talk to each other,” Page says. “It’s not the day room in the prison, where you kind of talk above each other and there’s all these prison dynamics.

“How do we have a conversation? A productive meeting? That took, really, about six months.”

Patience paid off, and with a united group, Page picked up grant money, which helped put exonerees in front of lawmakers. More than a dozen of the men Page worked with went to Austin. Meanwhile, several other circumstances drew attention to the cause. Acting on behalf of some exonerees, a couple of attorneys joined in lobbying efforts (perhaps with slightly less-pure intentions than Page’s, as would be revealed later when the lawyers charged exonerees for the work). Media coverage was heavy. Black leaders rallied at the state capitol.

It all crescendoed in 2009, when legislators passed the Tim Cole Act, named for a man who’d been posthumously exonerated the year before. Under it, exonerees get a lump sum equaling $80,000 per year for each year they spent behind bars, plus monthly annuity payments totaling up to $80,000 a year, ostensibly for life. As of November, Texas has paid  $111 million to exonerees.

* * *

By now Miles’ story is presented like a well-oiled machine, and this afternoon in Page’s class it takes him 18 minutes and 12 seconds to tell it. Watching him tell his story is like watching a crane operator lower cargo, meticulously and with perfect precision. He rarely projects pathos, and today there is not a shade of indignation. His arrest, wrongful incarceration and exoneration comprise one big footnote to the endeavor in which he is currently engaged: building Miles of Freedom.

Miles makes sure to mention that he wants his story to take a back seat to the organization’s goals. The “Miles” part of the nonprofit’s name, Miles tells the class, is actually an acronym: Motivated, Inspired, Law-abiding, Enthusiastic, Successful citizens. That’s what they’re trying to pull from the wreckage.

“Keep that in mind,” he says. “Please don’t connect ‘Miles’ with Richard Miles.”

Page is quick: “How are people not going to do that!” she says, to the class’s laughter. “Come on.”

“Well, I guess for the sake of the organization,” he says. “If someone were to ask you, ‘What does Miles mean?’ those are the steps to successful citizenship.”

After class, Miles folds his materials away and heads for his car. The meeting has gone well, and it feels feasible to Miles that he could soon have a paid staff. “That evolution — you go from incarcerated to exoneree to, now, I’m founder of an organization,” he says, steering the Cadillac away from campus. “That feels good.”

Miles enters a place of reflection, eyes fixed on the road ahead. Conversation turns to chess. Miles doesn’t play anymore, but lately, he’s been thinking about bringing a set to his regular meetings with Dallas youth. “I like the art of chess because chess to me is life,” he says. He talks about his family, about the pull he felt to write them checks after he received his compensation; he couldn’t see the sense in being stingy with the people who’d seen him through his worst. He gave each of his siblings $10,000. “We’re all going to be blessed, because we were all incarcerated,” Miles says. He mentions his father, whose funeral he didn’t get to attend.

Eventually, the highway grows congested, and Miles exits for the solitude of the side streets.

* * *

In 2010, Miles left college and traveled with other exonerees to promote Tested, a book about their experiences. The group appeared on Larry King Live that October, and though there were many voices to get to, King asked Miles a direct question about how he was able to move on from the injustice of the withheld evidence.

“Weren’t you angry and bitter when you got released?” King said.

“Yes, sir, I was,” replied Miles. “But if I dwell on the anger, I can’t get past it.”

The family and friends who surround Miles say they’re impressed by the way he’s been able to shirk bitterness and approach life with a pure heart. “Every person wants to believe that we are actually free,” says Miles. “Every person wants to believe that all men are created equal.” When you run smack-dab into evidence to the contrary, he says, you can let it turn you cold. Or, you can do your small part to stop the injustice.

Miles is as busy as ever, and some who know him worry about how his tendencies toward reclusiveness might mix with his constant eyes-forward approach. “What is he now, 39?” his mom says, a year off at the time. “That’s too young to close down.” McCloskey, the Centurion Ministries founder, says Miles’ authentic charisma and genuine love of people have made him a “star exoneree, in terms of his ability to adapt and develop a whole new life once he got out.” But “beyond that exterior, he’s going through a lot, too,” McCloskey adds. “It’s difficult.”

Miles’ house buzzed on a recent Saturday morning. A crew was installing insulation in the attic. Raelyn had turned two, grown five of the cutest braids in America and started running full speed into love seats, letting her momentum carry her tummy into the leather while her legs bent up behind her. Raelyn was in all pink, and her dad was in flip-flops and cargo shorts.

And then there was Latoya Miles, who appeared every so often to corral her daughter. Latoya, who works at a local hospital, met Miles in 2012. By that point, his schoolboy charm had been dampened by the elongated stay in prison. But at a car wash one afternoon — a hangout where guys looked to impress — he tried his hand. Latoya ignored him on first walk-by but engaged him when she walked out. Somehow, Miles pulled a number. About two and half months later, the two were headed to a happy hour when Miles got a call about a meeting of exonerees that night. He tried to be cryptic on his end of the phone conversation, but Latoya still pushed for an explanation, so he pulled the car over and told her his story — all of it.

Uneasiness stung the air. He’d been fully exonerated just a short time before meeting her, but his perspective only strengthened her feelings. Here was a guy who’d been dealt one of life’s toughest hands and come out the other side, not angry, not bitter, not even content to forget — but bent on doing his part. She latched onto his ambitions. She was also genuinely unimpressed by the check. “It was never: ‘Oooh, you’re going to get this compensation?’” she says, insinuating a wink-wink. “It was like, ‘OK, so what are you going to do with that once you get it? Are you going to invest?’ Those were my questions.” Miles appreciated Latoya’s independence and the fact that she looked out for him. They got married in 2013, splitting the tab on the wedding.

William Lloyd died from complications related to thyroid cancer on May 27, 2009, several months before Miles was released. The small saving grace was that William had at least seen his son’s freedom appear likely. On June 3, after Thelma laid her husband to rest at a morning funeral, she retreated to her room for a nap. She awoke to a call from McCloskey, who had good news: He’d come away from a first meeting with the district attorney’s office surprised at how sure investigators already were as to Miles’ innocence. “The Bible says that once a seed is planted into the ground, then will come life,” Thelma says.

What does the future hold for Richard Miles? He has a faint vision to eventually recede from his full-time role at Miles of Freedom, perhaps 10 years from now, stepping into a role as chairman and president and relinquishing his title as CEO. Ten years after that he could see himself merely as chairman. He already took some weight off his shoulders earlier this year, when Miles of Freedom at last took on its first paid staff. Miles wants to go back to finish his degree, but in his wildest post-exoneration and post-CEO and postgrad dreams, the only sort of job he can envision is one that allows him to go to work for his community. “I have to tell him sometimes,” says his sister, LaShawnda, “take a minute to live.”

* * *

Shawn Shinneman is a Dallas-based journalist who currently covers technology for the Dallas Business Journal.

* * *

Editor: Mike Dang
Photographer: Laura Buckman
Fact-checker: Ethan Chiel
Copy editor: Liz Byer

Shawn Shinneman | Longreads | November 2017 | 23 minutes (5,753 words)

Richard Miles has no preternatural pull toward stuff, but after he received his compensation from the state of Texas for a wrongful conviction, he did make one purchase of minor extravagance: a majestic-looking chess set, which he had installed at the entryway to his Duncanville, Texas, home. This is what greets his guests: a wooden board checkered in alternating shades of stain, fit with a hand-chiseled animal kingdom (a few bishop-giraffes now missing ears), sitting in a floodlit display case. The base of the display is solid wood, painted a soft white and about the size of an oven. Atop that, the board rests on a circular platform, about six inches tall and fitted with a small motor. In theory, it rotates. In actuality, the function remains turned off. When it’s engaged, the board spins too swiftly, and kings and their men veer off and collapse.

To Miles, the game of chess is the game of life: You have to be on the move while thinking ahead. A chess player should be simultaneously offensive and defensive, productive while defending what’s theirs. Miles developed a taste for the game in prison. “It was either checkers, chess, dominoes — or you’re talking about somebody,” he says.

More than a dozen years into Miles’ sentence, he learned the prosecution had been playing cards with a trick deck. He was freed in 2009. Three years later, when he was fully exonerated of the murder and aggravated assault for which he’d been put away, the state of Texas’ apology came in the form of a $1.2 million check. Now come monthly annuity payments totaling $71,000 a year. As of this writing, the state has paid Miles about $1.5 million.

Those numbers, however, tell a slanted tale. Like most prisoners who do substantial time, exonerees depart life behind bars for an intimidating new world. Things like completing menial tasks and finding and keeping a job — not to mention the prospects of building a  fulfilling career and life — prove difficult. But unlike most prisoners who do substantial time, exonerees often don’t have access to the various re-entry resources that await convicts. That can make the process seem a bit like receiving a good luck slap on the back and a check to take home.

People who have been wrongfully imprisoned experience a unique type of mental fallout. A few years ago, when a dozen Dallas exonerees agreed to check in with a psychiatrist, all 12, including Miles, were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Not one was found mentally healthy, and not one has since received serious treatment. Various family members have expressed differing levels of concern about Miles’ state of mind, and his mother’s assessment has been painfully blunt: “A part of him is still dead,” she says one afternoon, “still incarcerated.”

For some of Miles’ exoneree brethren in other states, financial reparations and even the detached sense of regret that accompanies them remain a pipe dream. Texas — Red Texas — has one of the most progressive compensation laws in America, and yet it’s difficult to tell whether the money is spurring mental or emotional recovery. Even a king can topple from a spinning foundation. At different moments, in different lights, the compensation granted to Miles can seem either extraordinarily beneficial or, given the enduring impact of wrongful incarceration, remarkably futile.

* * *

Miles has fed his compensation into a few different ways. He bought a house for himself and another for his mom, he made a sizable tithe to help remodel his late father’s church and he put a 2011 Jaguar XJL in his garage. He then took $150,000 and started a nonprofit he named Miles of Freedom.

Several well-compensated exonerees have ended up pursuing nonprofit work, but Miles chose not to cater his organization exclusively to exonerees. He has aimed his assistance at all those struggling with re-entry, keeping close to heart his brothers behind bars. One hazy Texas winter afternoon, Miles was working his way toward the Dallas campus of Texas A&M University–Commerce to speak to a group he hoped could help him expand Miles of Freedom’s reach and resources. It was a social work class taught by Jaimie Page, who was instrumental in unifying exonerees to fight for increased compensation. Page invited Miles so he and her students could compare notes, with the goal that they could set a more robustly funded path forward.

Miles was optimistic about what the meeting could bring. The refreshing thing about Page was that she didn’t seem to want anything out of Miles, or Johnnie Lindsey, or Christopher Scott — guys who in the drop of a gavel had gone from convicted killers and rapists to innocent men, in certain eyes, something entirely different: dollar signs. Page has more than once turned down money from exonerees for her help. Now, she was inviting Miles to her classroom not as Guy Who Had Bad Thing Happen to Him, but as the head of an organization.

One of the central struggle in Miles’ first life was rooted in a yearning to experience the freedom outside his sheltered upbringing, and in his second he grappled with a stinging guilt associated with his conviction. The tension of his third is in a search for an identity deeper than Richard Miles, exoneree. Turning out of his South Dallas office in a black Cadillac CTS (he bought it after seeing the bill for his first bit of maintenance on the Jag), he was feeling good.

One of the first things Miles had done when he had gotten out was enroll in college. Still awaiting his compensation at the time, he had lived on student aid. He hadn’t known how to use a computer, which had been embarrassing, and he had taken a public speaking course, which had been terrifying. But from the latter he gained confidence, and he was soon telling his story over and over — in classrooms, conferences and on a book tour. That story ends well: Miles has been let out of prison and is now in front of you, speaking. This is remarkable and inspiring. But that basic narrative suggests no plan of action. No purpose. Our feature presentation, The Life of Richard Miles, has now ended. Enjoy your evening.

“I think now, more so it’s trying to walk away with a plan,” he says in the car. “That makes me have to study more. It makes me kind of forget about myself.”

Miles arrives early for class. He’s directed to wait in the library, where he settles momentarily and then gets up and paces the hallways talking on his cell phone.

By the time Page gets there, he’s been on three separate calls with Aubrey Jones, his wise and always beaming former prison-mate, now his right-hand man at Miles of Freedom. In class, he sits up front in a black blazer, a silver watch showing, chic as usual. At about 1 p.m., Page calls class to order and introduces her guest, turning to Miles. “So,” she says warmly, “maybe you can start with a little bit about your story.”

* * *

May 16, 1994, early morning: A couple of minutes after 19-year-old Miles is dropped off near the neighborhood in which he’s staying, he crosses the street in front of a stopped police car and suddenly finds himself under the glow of a helicopter’s beam. Ground police appear in flocks, surround Miles and arrest him. Not far away, at a Texaco gas station near Dallas’ Bachman Lake, two men have been shot several times at close range. One is dead. The other will be permanently disabled. A witness has told dispatchers the shooter is wearing something similar to Miles’ attire.

Still, even sitting in the back of the police car, Miles isn’t nervous. He figures the cops will call the people he’s been with all evening, realize he’s telling the truth and release him. Trying to elicit a confession, Detective B.J. Hooker spends 10 hours in and out of questioning Miles, whose premonition is partially correct: The police call the alibis, and the alibis check out.

As the day wears on, the police charge him anyway.

There’s hardly any evidence to convict. Under closer examination, Miles’ clothes don’t quite match the description. He’d been in dark-blue Dickies pants; witnesses say the shooter was wearing dark-colored shorts. He had on a black derby hat with a rigid felt brim and a feather; the shooter was described as wearing a “floppy” hat. (Miles’ hat would disappear before trial.) Miles is light skinned and about 5 foot 6, relatively short; the shooter is said to be tall and dark skinned. Seven witnesses are shown a photo lineup of Miles and five others. In it, Miles is the only one wearing a white tank top, which matches the description of the shooter. Only Marcus Thurman identifies Miles. Thurman, whose initial description to cops had led to Miles’ arrest, had still been at the Texaco that morning when police, in an odd move, brought Miles to the scene, took him out of the car and swabbed his hands for gunshot residue. Thurman got a look at Miles then, before his positive ID during the photo lineup. Prior to taking the stand—he will later say—Thurman is coached as to the defendant’s whereabouts in the courtroom. He serves as the prosecution’s star witness, pointing to Miles as the killer. Lab tech Vicki Hall’s testimony stretches the significance of trace levels of residue — minuscule enough to be found in the dirt — that show up on Miles’ right hand. Miles is left-handed. She will later say she would have testified differently if she had it over.

But it’s not the reversal of those two key testimonies that gets Miles out of prison; those come later, triggering his exoneration. One day in 2007, Miles is in his cell during lockdown when he gets a delivery, volumes upon volumes upon volumes: his trial transcript, the trove of valuable documents he could never afford, which had made it nearly impossible to make a compelling case for a new trial. In Miles’ world, he’s on a deserted-island quest for innocence and this is the flare gun to signal help, the thing he’d held out hope for during his darkest moments. He could change his situation, if only he could get his hands on the transcript.

In his cell, Miles works through thousands of pages over several sittings, trying to read as if he’s guilty so as to overcorrect for his own bias, a tip he acquired from a writ writer in the prison law library. The police report is here, too, but Miles saves it for last. That, he figures, he’s seen already. Except, as it turns out, this version is much different. The file provided to Centurion Ministries, the organization that has taken on Miles’ innocence case and sent him the files, is more than three times the size of the one given to William Lloyd, Miles’ father, years earlier. It contains evidence that the defense never saw, including a promising lead that appears to have been ignored by police in the pursuit of Miles. He and his lawyers hadn’t known that a woman had called police one day in May 1995, talking about a shooting at a Texaco not far from where Miles was picked up, with the time frame to match. They were about to try a man in connection, she told them, but the real shooter was her ex. She reluctantly provided the name of the suspect, Keith Richard, but did not give her own name and feared she’d be killed if her former boyfriend was questioned. She also identified the gun as a 9 mm pistol, a detail that hadn’t been publicized. Another report described an encounter the two victims had had outside a Kroger a few days before the shooting, during which the surviving victim, Robert Johnson, had threatened a man with a gun, the same one found on the floorboard of the car after the shooting, thus further discrediting Johnson’s claims in the courtroom that he was a random victim, that the gun was merely for defense and that the two had no enemies.

Already well versed on the state’s duty to disclose exculpatory evidence, Miles discovers the missing documents from inside his prison cell. A confusing mix of anger and elation envelops him. It is in this moment he knows he will be free.

On what sort of submarine explorations has Miles’ mind since embarked? He has been scared, angry, tired, and soaked in guilt. He has fought; he has prayed. He has considered what dying could do for him and how to achieve it. He has learned the key to forgetting about yourself: to account for every minute, never to be idle. Will he be able to unlearn this? More hours in law books, working in the infirmary. More hours lifting weights, playing chess. Sleep eat work eat exercise study play eat sleep. Repeat. Do not sit; do not sink. Never leave a moment free, lest reality come bubbling to the surface.

* * *

August 26, 1995, late evening: Welcome to the coldest hunk of concrete in America.

Miles had just twice heard the word “guilty.” The jury had deliberated for eight hours, a good sign, and then the foreman — a young, Black woman — rose to her feet in the courtroom and said it, and while some of the jurors wept, Miles had fallen to his chair, stood, and was carried away to this concrete slab in a holding chamber. After a long day, the chamber was otherwise clear. Miles was alone.

The truth shall set you free.

Miles’ parents stopped by. Thelma, the uplifter, mother of four, forever of hope. William, a Vietnam veteran: spiritual, serious. Dad. Miles and his older sister, LaShawnda, have a different father by blood, but it is William who raised them, along with the two boys, William and Emanuel, he and Thelma had together. The rules of his house were smothering. Miles was boisterous, a jokester. The way his classmates’ laughter fed something inside him assured his constant presence inside detention. He developed an interest in girls, and a smile. “A little lover,” Thelma calls it. Meanwhile, William’s religious vision required considerable devotion. The family participated in revivals, meaning nightly trips to the church. Home life offered little leisure. Miles yearned for more. He was not even allowed to play checkers or chess.

He had been arrested once before. That first time had been a year and a half after a fateful conversation with his father. The talk had taken place during the evening, out back behind the house. He had been sitting in William’s beat-up Chevy truck, on the wrong end of a three-hour lecture about abiding by the rules of this house so long as you live in this house. Miles decided not to live in this house. His supervisor at his job at McDonald’s, who went by L.A., offered to take him in, and a guy named Tori picked Miles up.

“Man, you know, it’s good!” Tori told Miles. “You’re moving out! You’re staying on your own!”

Tori lived with his mom.

He did not take Miles directly to L.A.’s. Instead, he took Miles to a corner, where they met a drug dealer. The group Miles would fall in with kept two hotel rooms, a place at Raw Suites Hotel — the chill-out spot — and a place across the street at the Deluxe Inn, where the transactions went down. They sold crack and smoked pot. Soon, Miles found himself entranced by this new street life. He dropped out of school late during his senior year, and the following year, on March 1, 1994, police got clearance to search the room at Raw Suites and found about half a gram of crack cocaine atop the trash can’s heap. Police did not find cash on Miles, and therefore — his lawyer suggested — he might have a chance in court. Instead, a month in, he pleaded guilty in exchange for probation, sure he’d be able to avoid further trouble. He distanced himself, he says, from the Raw Suites crew. On April 26, he turned 19. Three weeks later, everything changed.

So there were Miles’ parents. They’d always insisted that should their children get in trouble with the law, they would not be there to help. They would not put up bail or fund a lawyer. They would not visit. Miles was staring back at the owners of the home he abandoned, who raised him until he decided that their services would no longer be needed, that he was a man.

The walls were down and Miles was reduced, naked.

Under William’s faith, the family had spoken of this date in August as the endpoint, refusing to legitimize the possibility of a conviction. Once the day came, conversation rang hollow. Thelma wondered what to say. She did not want to make Miles feel as if his parents were doubting their faith in God. “But we looked at what, 80 years? 60 years?” she says now. Miles picks up on something. “My dad was like, ‘Man, your court-appointed lawyer is going to do what he’s supposed to do,’” he says. “‘The word of God says that the truth shall set — ’ So he was more like that.”

Relaying the story, 40-year-old Miles is wearing a white T-shirt, sitting on his leather couch, the light above illuminating the grays on his closely cropped head. A room over, his year-old daughter, Raelyn, starts to cry. Miles checks on her and returns.

“It was me, too,” he says. “I know I had to go to God: ‘What is this? Man, this makes no sense.’”

Miles’ lawyer, Ed Gray, had been sure the jury would show mercy — given the tears — all the way up until Miles confessed during the sentencing hearing to dealing drugs, providing the missing motive. Miles was sentenced to 40 years and 20 years, respectively, and a judge tacked on another 20 for his violation of probation. All three sentences could be served concurrently, setting his maximum sentence at 40 years. But Miles’ release would come much sooner, 15 years after his arrest, in October of 2009.

By that point, much damage had been done. Miles moved in with his mother, and Thelma Miles quickly took note of all the new traits her eldest son had acquired. He would sit very straight and still, so as to not extend outside his personal space. He would seldom leave the house, and he struggled to make friends or connect with others. When he needed to go to the bathroom, he would ask. “I’m like, ‘Richard, just get up and go!’” Thelma says. “He said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m just so — ’ ‘I know, baby, you’re just so used to it.’”

One day Miles was mowing the yard when an alarm sounded, the weekly test of the emergency system. From inside, Thelma noticed the lawnmower motor had quieted, and she stepped outside to check on her son. Miles had hopped up on the porch and snapped to attention. The alarm had transported him back to the prison yard, its strict schedule, the unforgiving guards.

Miles struggled with the college classes he’d enrolled in — although he managed to earn praise along the way from professors who knew his story. He’d taken college courses in prison, where the teachers taught. Out here, they instructed: read this, analyze that, come to class ready to discuss. The medium through which he was to study changed, too, and suddenly involved a screen. The Blackboard app was baffling. “When I left, beepers,” Miles says. “When I came back, iPhones.” His peers were warm to his story, but he quietly wondered how many times he could reasonably request simple technological assistance.

For Miles and other exonerees, struggles to assimilate into modern culture are compounded by the psychological impact of wrongful incarceration. “They feel like they’re Martians landing on Earth,” says Centurion Ministries founder Jim McCloskey, whose organization counts Miles among its 54 successful exonerations over 37 years. “It’s so difficult for any of us to really understand the pain and suffering that they’ve gone through and their psychological structure, and how they view the world and people.”

Cautionary tales abound. In 2008, CNN found Wiley Fountain — a Dallas exoneree who’d been compensated $190,000 under a prior iteration of the law — had become homeless just five years after he was released. Last year in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, police found Darryl Hunt dead in a pickup truck. A dozen years after DNA proved he wasn’t the rapist and killer who took a young life in 1984, Hunt was the victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Dallas exonerees are overwhelmingly Black and male, a demographic that, according to Page, the Texas A&M University-Commerce professor, is historically overrepresented in institutionalized mental health care and historically underrepresented in outpatient mental health care. In a society already squeamish about treating the mind, this is a population more resistant than most. When Page secured the money for evaluations, the men in the group she was working with had strict demands: The psychiatrist had to be a Black male over the age of 50, and he had to be willing to meet each of the exonerees at their individual homes. Page knew of no one, but her intern uncovered a man named Charles Mathis. He worked his way through the group and eventually diagnosed every one of them with post-traumatic stress disorder.

According to Miles, Page says it’s possible the exonerees are actually dealing with a more serious form of PTSD called C-PTSD. The C stands for “complex” and signals a more serious version resulting from long-term or repeat trauma, such as consistent sexual or physical abuse.

Either way, Mathis’ diagnoses largely did not result in treatment. Page says not a single exoneree from her group received treatment, although Miles later submitted to a couple of therapy sessions through Centurion Ministries. By and large, the men were guarded about sharing something so personal, let alone with someone who could have little grasp of the impossible emotions with which they’d dealt. “I think they’re more baffled by us,” says Miles. “The tables tend to turn.”

* * *

Across the country, the likelihood that an exoneree will be compensated in any significant way depends heavily where in the U.S. they were found guilty.

Today, 18 states don’t have any law guaranteeing exonerees compensation for the time they spent in jail. Options in those states might include arguing in front of a state commission, lobbying legislators or filing a civil claim against the state. If you win a civil claim, you could fill your bank account with $15 million or $20 million — but you’ll be in the vast minority, as winning a civil case for compensation is rare. Success is most likely for exonerees whose stories have gained national followings.

Of the states that have standards, the restitution they promise exonerees varies wildly. Most cap compensation. The state of Wisconsin provides a maximum $25,000 lump sum, about enough to buy a 2017 Honda Accord Coupe. Florida tops out at $2 million. California pays $100 per day spent behind bars, and Iowa $50.

Restrictions and caveats make an impact, too. Even after Louisiana (compensation cap: $330,000) finds reason to grant an inmate’s release, the state puts the burden of proof back on the exoneree — guilty until proven innocent — for the purposes of a payout. Under Florida’s “clean hands” provision, only exonerees with felony-free records prior to their wrongful convictions are eligible to receive compensation. One notorious case saw a man denied because of an unrelated prior felony conviction for possession of a single quaalude pill. Because of his earlier drug arrest and guilty plea, Miles, too, would’ve been stonewalled.

And the same politics that drive states not to pay exonerees are in play when it comes to freeing them in the first place. This is one explanation for why the states with the most exonerees also tend to have the most progressive compensation laws. Tom Sullivan, a defense attorney in Arkansas, says politicians in his state have long refused to see the wrongs their justice system is capable of inflicting. “We aren’t going to set up a system of compensation, because we don’t ever make errors,” he says, characterizing the attitude of legislators in his state.

Sullivan worked on the case of Arkadelphia, Arkansas, native Gyronne Buckley. In late 2013, the Arkansas Claims Commission voted to do something it had done only once before: The commission unanimously granted Buckley $460,000 for the 11 and a half years of a life sentence he served for a drug offense that was later expunged. It seemed the state was taking a step forward. But with tax dollars on the line, politics can interfere. As it happened, Arkansas’ then–Attorney General, Dustin McDaniel, rallied a legislative subcommittee to reverse the commission’s decision. Buckley, who didn’t respond to several attempts to make contact for this story, hasn’t seen a penny.

Separated by just a three-and-a-half-hour drive on I-30, the realities that greeted Miles and Buckley outside prison bars were vastly different.

In Texas, momentum to transform state policy into one of the country’s most progressive did indeed start with the state’s massive community of exonerees. Under Dallas County Prosecutor Craig Watkins, who championed a proactive approach to freeing the jailed innocent, the number of Texas exonerees inflated. They had numbers, but lacked organization and leadership. In 2007, Page volunteered for a boss’s vague offer to work with former inmates, and fell hard into the world of wrongful incarceration. She was moved by the stories of dozens of Dallas exonerees and, in time, became a trusted figure within their community.

“Here I am, a White woman trying to help a large group of these men just be able to talk to each other,” Page says. “It’s not the day room in the prison, where you kind of talk above each other and there’s all these prison dynamics.

“How do we have a conversation? A productive meeting? That took, really, about six months.”

Patience paid off, and with a united group, Page picked up grant money, which helped put exonerees in front of lawmakers. More than a dozen of the men Page worked with went to Austin. Meanwhile, several other circumstances drew attention to the cause. Acting on behalf of some exonerees, a couple of attorneys joined in lobbying efforts (perhaps with slightly less-pure intentions than Page’s, as would be revealed later when the lawyers charged exonerees for the work). Media coverage was heavy. Black leaders rallied at the state capitol.

It all crescendoed in 2009, when legislators passed the Tim Cole Act, named for a man who’d been posthumously exonerated the year before. Under it, exonerees get a lump sum equaling $80,000 per year for each year they spent behind bars, plus monthly annuity payments totaling up to $80,000 a year, ostensibly for life. As of November, Texas has paid  $111 million to exonerees.

* * *

By now Miles’ story is presented like a well-oiled machine, and this afternoon in Page’s class it takes him 18 minutes and 12 seconds to tell it. Watching him tell his story is like watching a crane operator lower cargo, meticulously and with perfect precision. He rarely projects pathos, and today there is not a shade of indignation. His arrest, wrongful incarceration and exoneration comprise one big footnote to the endeavor in which he is currently engaged: building Miles of Freedom.

Miles makes sure to mention that he wants his story to take a back seat to the organization’s goals. The “Miles” part of the nonprofit’s name, Miles tells the class, is actually an acronym: Motivated, Inspired, Law-abiding, Enthusiastic, Successful citizens. That’s what they’re trying to pull from the wreckage.

“Keep that in mind,” he says. “Please don’t connect ‘Miles’ with Richard Miles.”

Page is quick: “How are people not going to do that!” she says, to the class’s laughter. “Come on.”

“Well, I guess for the sake of the organization,” he says. “If someone were to ask you, ‘What does Miles mean?’ those are the steps to successful citizenship.”

After class, Miles folds his materials away and heads for his car. The meeting has gone well, and it feels feasible to Miles that he could soon have a paid staff. “That evolution — you go from incarcerated to exoneree to, now, I’m founder of an organization,” he says, steering the Cadillac away from campus. “That feels good.”

Miles enters a place of reflection, eyes fixed on the road ahead. Conversation turns to chess. Miles doesn’t play anymore, but lately, he’s been thinking about bringing a set to his regular meetings with Dallas youth. “I like the art of chess because chess to me is life,” he says. He talks about his family, about the pull he felt to write them checks after he received his compensation; he couldn’t see the sense in being stingy with the people who’d seen him through his worst. He gave each of his siblings $10,000. “We’re all going to be blessed, because we were all incarcerated,” Miles says. He mentions his father, whose funeral he didn’t get to attend.

Eventually, the highway grows congested, and Miles exits for the solitude of the side streets.

* * *

In 2010, Miles left college and traveled with other exonerees to promote Tested, a book about their experiences. The group appeared on Larry King Live that October, and though there were many voices to get to, King asked Miles a direct question about how he was able to move on from the injustice of the withheld evidence.

“Weren’t you angry and bitter when you got released?” King said.

“Yes, sir, I was,” replied Miles. “But if I dwell on the anger, I can’t get past it.”

The family and friends who surround Miles say they’re impressed by the way he’s been able to shirk bitterness and approach life with a pure heart. “Every person wants to believe that we are actually free,” says Miles. “Every person wants to believe that all men are created equal.” When you run smack-dab into evidence to the contrary, he says, you can let it turn you cold. Or, you can do your small part to stop the injustice.

Miles is as busy as ever, and some who know him worry about how his tendencies toward reclusiveness might mix with his constant eyes-forward approach. “What is he now, 39?” his mom says, a year off at the time. “That’s too young to close down.” McCloskey, the Centurion Ministries founder, says Miles’ authentic charisma and genuine love of people have made him a “star exoneree, in terms of his ability to adapt and develop a whole new life once he got out.” But “beyond that exterior, he’s going through a lot, too,” McCloskey adds. “It’s difficult.”

Miles’ house buzzed on a recent Saturday morning. A crew was installing insulation in the attic. Raelyn had turned two, grown five of the cutest braids in America and started running full speed into love seats, letting her momentum carry her tummy into the leather while her legs bent up behind her. Raelyn was in all pink, and her dad was in flip-flops and cargo shorts.

And then there was Latoya Miles, who appeared every so often to corral her daughter. Latoya, who works at a local hospital, met Miles in 2012. By that point, his schoolboy charm had been dampened by the elongated stay in prison. But at a car wash one afternoon — a hangout where guys looked to impress — he tried his hand. Latoya ignored him on first walk-by but engaged him when she walked out. Somehow, Miles pulled a number. About two and half months later, the two were headed to a happy hour when Miles got a call about a meeting of exonerees that night. He tried to be cryptic on his end of the phone conversation, but Latoya still pushed for an explanation, so he pulled the car over and told her his story — all of it.

Uneasiness stung the air. He’d been fully exonerated just a short time before meeting her, but his perspective only strengthened her feelings. Here was a guy who’d been dealt one of life’s toughest hands and come out the other side, not angry, not bitter, not even content to forget — but bent on doing his part. She latched onto his ambitions. She was also genuinely unimpressed by the check. “It was never: ‘Oooh, you’re going to get this compensation?’” she says, insinuating a wink-wink. “It was like, ‘OK, so what are you going to do with that once you get it? Are you going to invest?’ Those were my questions.” Miles appreciated Latoya’s independence and the fact that she looked out for him. They got married in 2013, splitting the tab on the wedding.

William Lloyd died from complications related to thyroid cancer on May 27, 2009, several months before Miles was released. The small saving grace was that William had at least seen his son’s freedom appear likely. On June 3, after Thelma laid her husband to rest at a morning funeral, she retreated to her room for a nap. She awoke to a call from McCloskey, who had good news: He’d come away from a first meeting with the district attorney’s office surprised at how sure investigators already were as to Miles’ innocence. “The Bible says that once a seed is planted into the ground, then will come life,” Thelma says.

What does the future hold for Richard Miles? He has a faint vision to eventually recede from his full-time role at Miles of Freedom, perhaps 10 years from now, stepping into a role as chairman and president and relinquishing his title as CEO. Ten years after that he could see himself merely as chairman. He already took some weight off his shoulders earlier this year, when Miles of Freedom at last took on its first paid staff. Miles wants to go back to finish his degree, but in his wildest post-exoneration and post-CEO and postgrad dreams, the only sort of job he can envision is one that allows him to go to work for his community. “I have to tell him sometimes,” says his sister, LaShawnda, “take a minute to live.”

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Shawn Shinneman is a Dallas-based journalist who currently covers technology for the Dallas Business Journal.

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Editor: Mike Dang
Photographer: Laura Buckman
Fact-checker: Ethan Chiel
Copy editor: Liz Byer