Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated

by Dave Eggers (Compiler), Lola Vollen (Compiler), Scott Turow (Introduction)

Overview

On September 30, 2003, Calvin was declared innocent and set free from Angola State Prison, after serving 22 years for a crime he did not commit. Like many other exonerees, Calvin experienced a new world that was not open to him. Hitting the streets without housing, money, or a change of clothes, exonerees across America are released only to fend for themselves. In the tradition of Studs Terkel's oral histories, this book collects the voices and stories of the exonerees for whom life — inside and out — is forever framed by extraordinary injustice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781940450919
Publisher:	McSweeney's Publishing
Publication date:	10/01/2015
Series:	Voice of Witness
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	489
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Lola Vollen is a physician specializing in the aftermath of large-scale human rights abuses. She has worked with survivors of systemic injustices in Somalia, South Africa, Israel, Croatia, and Kosovo. Working with Physicians for Human Rights, she developed Bosnia’s mass-grave exhumation and identification program. She is the founder of the Life After Exoneration Program, which helps exonerated prisoners in the United States with their transitions after release. She is a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley’s Institute of International Studies, co-editor of the Voice of Witness series, and a practicing clinician.

Dave Eggers is the editor of McSweeney’s and the author of four books, including What is the What and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the winner of the Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. As a journalist, his work has appeared in the the New Yorker, the New York Times, Esquire, the Guardian, and other publications. His first book of oral histories, Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America’s Teachers—co-edited and co-written with Daniel Moulthrop and Nínive Calegari, appeared in July of 2005. In 2004–2005 he taught a course at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism with Lola Vollen, and co-founded the Voice of Witness series.

Table of Contents

Foreword 1

Introduction 3

My Life Is a Broken Puzzle Christopher Ochoa 15

My Mama Didn't Raise No Killers Juan Melendez 45

I Stepped Into a Dream Gary Gauger 75

I Am the Expert James Newsome 105

Thank God for DNA Calvin Willis 131

If a Five-Year-Old Did It, You Did It John Stoll 159

Now I Question Everything Beverly Monroe 181

Sheep Among Wolves Michael Evans Paul Terry 221

Flowers in Your Hair David Pope 247

I'm a Dead Man Walking Joseph Amrine 285

Family Man Peter Rose 321

Bad Things Happen to Good People Kevin Green 345

People Don't Know How Lucky They Are to Have Their Liberty Exoneree Roundtable 381

Appendix A Causes of Wrongful Conviction 401

Appendix B The Prison Experience 419

Appendix C Life After Exoneration 427

Appendix D Supplementary Material 435

Glossary 463