welcome to pathways i'm jenny hearts are in your host imagine you're nineteen years old and you're driving home from a party on a summer night and you get out of the car and next thing you know you're surrounded by five cop car and you get accused of murder and you get sentenced to life in prison you didn't do it you're innocent and no one believes you and you reach out to one organization after the next you write letters to everyone you know and no one helps you until finally someone returns your letter and they say we believe you we're going to help you get out that's what my show's about tonight so let's go meet those people  assess a case we're asking initially we're ask two questions do we believe this person is an ascent and who are they and in the process of determining innocence we are looking for a case that either has legal investigation legal avenues that we can pursue to get them exonerated or investigative avenues that we can pursue that would prove that they're innocent what we do is we re investigate the case as if it happened yesterday we reversed to get the conviction who are involved in the conviction in testifying against or even for the cause we're interested in understanding both sides of the equation has this potential the next question is who is this person and because character is very important to us it's not a science we like to think that it's somewhat of an art and as a result we've developed a process and a procedure that's built on close to forty years of experience century and receives letters from people literally all over the united states and canada and we will read and respond to every single letter we get and what we're looking for is the next great case to take on we start a correspondence with them we have a staff our staff people who vet these cases along with adult volunteers princeton community we eventually over time we gather the entire written record of the case of the sixty one people we've freed using those cases as a pure gold data so to speak  r the day we get a letter from them asserting their innocence to the day we actually commit and begin or work to free them it's usually three to five years sometimes longer i was falsely imprisoned at the age of nineteen in may of one thousand nine hundred four i was given a total of sixty years in the texas department of corrections for murder an attempted murder that i had no knowledge of it's amazing story utah if you don't believe in  incidences then i think you're going to believe in coincidence when you hear how he became a suspect numerous pieces of evidence brady claims there were not disclose during my jury trial scientific evidence that was crabber tainted at the time of my trial as it turned out because we we did a timeline ten minutes after that shooter disappeared in the neighborhood after actually the getaway car richard biles was let off by one of his friends to a black male wearing a white t shirt and the next you know the cops swarmed on richard handcuffed them and that began his nightmare we were recommended to richard by two different people when i was produce in costa raided i would meet a man by the name of benjamin spencer which is one of the cases desson tyrian has been working on for the longest he informed me of an innocence project out of princeton new jersey one of the few that work so no d n a cases but the other person is joyce and joyce came to be and to us only and asked us to take a look at the richard richard miles is a tremendous example not only a great case for actual innocence but also he just an extraordinary human being and that sort of came through in his correspondence this rose to the top richard's case and so i decided i wanted to go down to be richard and to be his family his father and his mother the percentage of mean and women that are falsely incarcerated i believe supersedes where we think i had to get into the percentage  because you don't know how many people are innocent until they're exonerated however when you consider that the prison population is over two million and people about a two percent ten percent prison population is actually innocent but if you consider just two percent what is that forty four thousand i mean that's extraordinary i mean why are we doing anything about that nobody could really with any degree of precision a give an accurate estimate of how many innocent people or imprisoned in america apparently very interesting that dallas texas leads the nation and exonerations and primarily because dallas kept the evidence other states after the  person lost their jury trial and after the courts of appeals deemed that they were actually guilty they threw away the evidence so we won't really know what that amount but arresting officers you have the attorneys expression if it's a court appointed court appointed attorney does not have the resources to adequately defame me and their client you have the state's prosecuting team that has a vast amount of resources and you cannot negate the jurors because the jurors or supposed to be competent and they we were allowed to take the evidence and take the facts and pull it on a scale so nobody is really new to wrongful incarceration and that's leads to the reason that there are so many people that are incarcerated for crimes that they did not commit and i don't think society really wants to admit that i feel safe in saying that there were tens of thousands of innocent men and women in prison in america for crimes they had nothing to do with their fifteen year from nineteen to thirty four that resources in prison particularly the texas prison i'm not privy to knowing other institutions and how they run their prison systems but texas in itself it lacks those  that a person needs once they are incarcerated we can't do anything about a person committing a crime but once they're in prison we being taxpayers should hold that institution accountable system the i'm in a transition and not just to house them for free labor that's ensuring and we've always cared deeply about our clients once they're free it's taken us a number of years to begin to form late systems of helping these folks when i was released at the age of thirty four i was totally disconnected from society when i went to prison it was beepers when i got out it was when i went to prison there was no trials in dallas and when i got out trees was everywhere  n time say that i knew dallas i recognized dallas but i didn't know it i recognize my family but i didn't know because i had been separated from or you can even tell two women in prison and so there is an emotional disconnect between genders and you get out and you totally feel lousy you feel handicapped you feel disabled and so you have to quote unquote fake it until you make it put this mask individual phase of the lot coming out of an institution even with employment part of our process is once these guys are freed is finding them housing and not all of them have family in fact a judge unexpectedly freed one of our guys right from the court room and because he'd been incarcerated for so long he literally had no family and we had nothing in place for him and so i brought him home once we free them we are their friends and we continue to be their advocates to help them in any way we can to get resettled it's what you do i mean if the choices they have to stay in prison until we can find them housing or i bring them home obviously i'm going to bring them home mom my soon to be wife a couple of months after my exoneration and eventually a year later i would have a daughter and so now i've been married for years and i have a two year old daughter and in the midst of all of that i think me finding my own purpose manifested mouser freedom is a nonprofit organization and i started  exoneration was complete with the monies that the state of texas on lots of person has falsely incarcerated miles of freedom's mission is to equip empower and employ individuals impacted by incarceration and we provide assistance but a family is in communities affected it was no other job for me to do because i was in prison i stored a mass of freedom not because i'm innocent but because i was in prison and i walked the same road that those million women walk when my dad died i cried owner shows when my grandmother died i cried owner shoulders in so the same quote unquote murderers and drug dealers that society refers to these men and women as days were my friends and associates and if i was empowered to change my life why i change and be a catalyst of change in somebody else's life and so miles of freedom began so much like jim mccluskey and soon tyrian you know we find times in our life when what we all is not as much as what we need i wanted to do a whole bunch of stuff when i was exonerated i'm quite sure gene wanted to do our bunch of stuff going to princeton seminary theological center but what did he need to do where was he most impactful that he was most impactful assisting in turning this organization into a house where exonerated i was more impactful assist in individuals coming out of prison whether you were innocent or guilty to be that hope to be there support to be there when you get out in and so a lot of ways we they are extraordinary if you or a falsely imprisoned person never give up you're going to write and try and get i'm going to write to people asking them to help free you and most people will not even respond to you i still know people that are in prison that are innocent and the only thing that i can tell them is to to have a very strong spiritual foundation because lao is in man's hands most of our people have written hundreds of letters over the years the people asking for help proclaiming their innocence ninety nine percent don't even respond but they keep on pressing they never give up there 's such a thing called the persistence of innocence and that's what richard miles said richard miles said persistence of innocence doesn't matter how much you won't freedom some people may never get it and so you have to find their peace inside of you their peace that surpasses our understanding that when everything that is tangible turns away from you you still have that spirit your connection that you know where you know it is not even about where i am is where i'm going it's what we do right now and it's totally dependent on where we're going to end up and so that's what i think carried you know a person that's innocent in prison because they may not get out but if they can be free spiritually and that's supersedes freedom physically it is so much that i want to say to centurion is so much that i have stated and it's so much that i will continuously say  g m i would just like to thank him for believing in in his self when everybody probably ostracized him in and and  fifty three more people or whether they continuously to fight and are unable to get out go in person they have to be in kerry said there by sometimes is better than the win and  we oftentimes fight to win when we just need to fight and as was interior in the eighty's they just fight hope always remains alive never let that candle of hope keep it flickering keep it lighted don't let it go out and eventually over time and unfortunately it will take a long time you'll be able to attract the interest of somebody wykes  it and do your best to prepare yourself for the eventuality of your ultimate freedom what a story right now thanks for tuning in this is another show pathway we'll see next time