executive director of century and industries and also there'll burton who spent twenty four years wrongly convicted in prison who will be talking to us about his story and the experiences that he went through before we get started  to remind everybody about the good work that century ministries does it's a non secular secular nonprofit organization in princeton new jersey and the primary mission of censure it is to free and vindicate from prison those who are completely innocent of the crimes which they have been wrongly convicted and have been imprisoned for either life or death sentences we have had last week we had richard miles come on and talk about his case tonight we ha darryl burton and i want to thank you both for coming on thank you for having us thank you so kate i was wonder if you could just talk a little bit about century and and to talk about how many cases that you've handled which you've had wrongly convicted individuals freed over the years we freed sixty two people returned to their families and one of the things i i think people should know about us that kind of sets us apart from other innocence organizations because they're quite a you across this country now is that most of our cases aren't d n a cases they're the hard cases field investigation cases that means they're much more costly it takes a lot longer to free people and and then the other part is it's a significant part of what we do is we come alongside our folks once they've been freed we don't just clapham on the back and say good anya good luck and godspeed we stick with them try and help them get on their feet once they get out and we also as they even as they mature into freedom we're still there for them where were their family we count them as our family and that's a significant difference and i think it's reflected in how healthy most of our acts on reason are you know they are doing ok they are doing well and then like darrell has started his own organization to work on behalf of wrongly convicted people who struggle with faith before i went to prison who grew up in the face you faithful community my mother and my grandmother they were faithful folks and so i grew up in the baptist faith tradition but as a young man as a kid i got away from religion and  right right ok and i just dismissed it because i don't think you know god was real it was very tedious to me but my grandmother was right and so growing up in a large family i grew up my mother had nine children my grandmother had nine children my grandmother had seven girls two boys my mother had seven boys and two girls as a kid that is and sank lower sales in st louis missouri in a little bit south of ferguson ferguson missouri area and so and i live in ferguson get famine fergus stains that was you know put me down in that you know in a fun kind of weight and i was ashamed of my dark skin and my complection but it was my dark skin that actually came to my rescue and help me being come exonerated after sindoor ministers took my case which guy was pumping gas one night into the automobile and a man approached him and shot and killed him and three or four people gave a description the night the crime was committed and said a person they saw was about five feet five feet six inches tall medium to light hours and they would you know realize they would get to romance and release me never dreamed it would turn into twenty four years that were just unheard of for me this is one nine hundred eighty four i'm about twenty two years old and i thought that the legal system was the best in the world and that innocent people don't go to prison and when this happened to me i thought i was only person in the world that was experiencing something like this and as they brought me into the system i saw this lawyer one time one visit with this lawyer and it was about an hour maybe two hour visit and then i saw this lawyer again was that trial picking the jury i had been in the city jail for about eight or nine months at that point so i just want to get to trial because i just knew once i get to trial i'm going home i'm innocent nobody's going to come to court and allow me that's just that's not going to happen well the guys in the jail they were saying you just don't get it man you know if you don't have a i was convicted and less than ours no motive no ballistic no d n a no confession a weapon of fingerprint nothing except two witnesses gas who came to court raise a hand again you know said i swear to tell the truth the whole truth and they l don't believe in and so but there was a human being that did this to me and in most situations in life if it's not a natural catastrophe human beings do nasty ugly and evil things to other human beings just man's inhumanity to other humans years plus twenty five years consecutive so that meant i had to spend seventy five years in prison before i would have been eligible for parole so twenty two and seventy five that's almost one hundred years old just to be eligible and then when they brought me over for sentencing and the judge asked a lawyer the lawyer had something to say in that she said no i don't have anything to say when i say wait a minute i want to say something can i speak and he said yes and and i was just angry at this point in my life very very angry and i said you know this c you you know you the prosecutor polies the witnesses so all you all you know you conspiring to convict me you frame immense confiscate my freedom a common innocent man and i just said what i don't find you guilty your lawyer can find you get if at anybody be mad at the jury that's who found you guilty i say but yanna you have the power to overturn his conviction you saw those people come in here and allow me and you can do something about it so this court nor the court is going to overturn what we have juries of your peers decide against you and the last words i said today joe is i don't know how long it's going to take but i'm a fight this case about prove that i'm innocent and they took me out of court room and so my anger was one thing that few me to fight the case and at this point i hated all lawyers i hated all judges all prosecutors all polish i hated the entire criminal justice system for many years i was few by hate and anger and also i had a daughter who  also i said i had to become a new father had just a role in college and so i wanted to i wanted to see my little girl again and i said i'm a fighter and will try to fight you know as hard as i can to get back to my child and that was that was my fuel and but they took me on what's called missouri state penitentiary in jefferson city missouri man a bunch of other men put us on this bus and about thirty four of us and they took us to disparate in what can only be described as reality the land of hail and horror and this involves a ban a huge banner that we saw coming inside of this facility is it will come to the missouri state penitentiary leave all your hopes family and dreams behind and that was the introduction brandon us with a number like an animal and everything pants shirts socks caps coat everything had that number on it and i just i hated that prison number i hated the whole situation and they would call the number over  they were talking about and i did they would put me in a hole in a couple days i would be get me out of the hole because the whole could it could really make a man loses my and i can work on my case but long story short i i began nine years for murder she didn't commit and they was had her on sixty minutes she was you know had been released and i said man of this organization this is happening this and people get out they got to help me too you know and so i went on a letter writing campaign i had written hundreds and hundreds of innocent that are in prison but we're small organization with limited resources we get thousands of requests every year from inmates who claim to be innocent out of all those requests we take two or three cases if we take the case it will be ten years before we get to it so we're good i'm going to write you put in your i had seventy five so i had time to write and i did i wrote them for ten years they took my case in two thousand and got me exonerated in two thousand and eight and so i was eighteen years from the first letter that i had written to that organization and you know i just have to say that you know for me someone who struggle with faith and struggle with you know with god and religious things i just learned after i began to read about religious stories that innocence is not some new phenomenon it is something that has happened thousands of years ago the story named joseph in this guy named jesus these other guys and women who were wrongfully convicted and sentence cases to death so i did learn from you know reading about those experiences this is not a new i think was new when it was encouraging for us is that we can do something about it you know we can have torment an organization that we started miracle of innocence to help other innocent people get out of prison because what i thought only happened to me is not the case thousands of people who are in prison like there are burton who innocent literally thousands and all of the people who are in prison of two point three million people that are incarcerated if one percent of those folks are innocent that's twenty three thousand people one person is too many  centurion got me out i was afforded their xander really that they get set free and exonerated in two thousand and eight number forty three you know and so some numbers stick with me what it was three of our guys reconnected with her and the way i got reconnected with her i came out and i don't know but this technology and all this stuff another man you guys are if you can find anybody on this internet stuff called the internet fam i dotted and they when they was looking i couldn't fine and  then just so happened her awful was in st louis he was looking at his newspaper water i was on the front page and he said man found innocent after serving twenty four years in prison wrongfully and it was my daughters and when he you know his latest i want to tell me said oh my god that's my niece's dad he's been set free and so he called his sister my daughter's mother and they were living in indiana and that's how i got reconnected with my daughter a few months after i got out and and the story is you know it's just as compelling as mine still feel like that you know i was not to protect it or take care of or i don't know what she was that i don't know what she was going through so that i live with that you know that regret just not been able to if you have children you know you love your children no matter what's going on you just two twenty four years later twenty four years later a little over twenty four years later so i was forty six forty seven ish almost forty seven i think so have you ever thought about those twenty four years and how three four years was taken from you yes i came to get those twenty four years as i come back into society i feel like i'm twenty four years behind every one else it's like i can't catch up i try my best to keep up with everybody so advanced technology you know was just the way life is so many people have established themselves you know i mean i was able to start corporations of companies of businesses or foundations of whatever we had just lost our foundation the miracle of innocence just last saturday and so to help innocent people get out of prison and then the help them once they get out like with centaurian what they've done for us they stay with us they still we become family stick with us and they don't they don't just say hey you out now fend for yourself try to figure it out which is that's overwhelming to try to figure out life after you've been gone a quarter of a century and so and just to try to do just what she would consider normal things trying to get up which is shirt and tie and coat on and go to work for some of us that's a real challenge that's a real task because when i stepped out so that you know after being released i don't know north from south east from west i was directionally challenged and i still get direction and china sometimes when i you know go into certain areas even in my own neighborhood where grew up bet i can find i can figure out where my mother's house was unless i get within like two or three blocks that all you know all the landmarks were gone what i remember as a kid growing up so it was you know very very difficult it is still difficult sometimes you know out here in the free world i mean i had traveler's fares down the highway seventy miles an hour i was frantic when i got on the and walking out and all the time has passed and i absolutely and that's what some guys did actually when i was trying to get a job working at a job for two years and again when i was fine again and interview in front of them he looked at the application and he looked at me as a matter what do you rip van winkle you wake up twenty five years later decide to go to work you have no work history for twenty five years what have you been right and i had this newspaper or that i pulled it out you know the bang that gave me as often as it man found innocent up twenty four years in prison he said oh my god didn't have a car scope and they were saying how you going to get it you don't have a car as i ride a bike you know i just you know i just i just wanted a job that just took me a long time to get a job two years to live where you were when you found out that the jury had taken your case yanis remember i was that the missouri state penitentiary and yeah we doing that when i was doing that there were a lot of i do remember exactly what i was doing probably just it was a routine day prison and every day is the same day so you get up you you have if you have some kind of assignment to go either to work or some present job or you can go in to the library and lot of my time is spent in a lab or law library if i was things about my case that look you know pretty sufficient for them and you have to be one hundred percent innocent but when they showed up it was like manna from heaven it was like i couldn't believe it you know and i was i was speech the case we believe in your innocence one hundred percent and they said these words you know stuck with me they said we're going to stay with you on this case to either we get you out and since you don't have a death penalty you won't be executed and no matter what and as a man i you know a lot of times even if i was struggling sometimes i would be struggling i just couldn't see myself calling them and asking them you know for you know some support of some money or you know and things like that i just they had done so much and so i just i just felt like they did the lion's share so i have to make it on my own now and in those times i'm not big call they was always there but i just felt you know they need to be happening next person get out you know they've already helped me so i'm spending more resources on me right the next person out there who worked at century a did to overturn the conviction your tradition you know was was thrown out and the prison door opened up and you walked out to freedom what was the feeling like twenty four years later  it was surreal i couldn't believe it and i can remember the day when the warden and a caseworker came to tell me i was being set free for at first the case with a cane and he had just one sheet of paper and he had this panic look look on his face and when caseworkers come at you like that in prison it's almost like you go into the whole solitary confinement and so that's what i was thinking when he had his real intense look and i go manic and put him in the lock up in the hole and then you know they don't need a reason but he had this paper and he said deronda i was put in the business office and the lady said did you know there are burton was going home today and he said what and she asked him again he said so i need you to fill out this sheet of paper where you go on you know i need some address i need you know some information just you know just flare information he said i said i don't know what i'm going if you for real but i don't believe it he said well it is true and you need to feel this out right away i need to get it back to where he's he said just put your mother that start packing your stuff this is on a friday i believe on a friday we're on fred he said i got this order from the court to release you in fifteen days i've had over for eleven days he said so i have three or four days to release you and if his pack your stuff and so i'm still just not believing that it is so i've been a solo is surreal i'm like i don't believe these people it's just you know this is some kind of game that they're playing and so and i mean i don't know what to be some how to play first call controls and i are in the last two doors the last two doors i remember those two doors which is same like they was miles away especially you know when i was you know someone i was being exonerated but those last two doors was just against seem like something that was in a dream a dream that i was a was finally to walk through those doors as a free man and five minutes you know that i was going to be free beyond those doors and when i got out that somebody had some footage of me but i did i look lost i just look like i was just you know things just didn't register right it was still just surreal and people get out of prison and come back to society and when they get out because a lot of folks don't know the things that we need that deals with the psychological impact you know the many of us all of us struggle with posttraumatic stress disorder and s i'm trying to get jobs trying to you know figure out transportation trying to get housing i work for an organization catholic charities where i was happened and estimate i was helping people come home from prison to reintegrate but i didn't qualify for those benefits so there's nothing in place for an innocent person and i didn't get compensated missouri has a compensation package for d n a exoneration but my case is not d n a and so i was in turin you know it was a hard case but that's what we want to do in office for things we want to try to cover with miracle of innocence and state's reinvestigation want to try to help them out for one try to also help educate the public you know about you know what happens to individuals and you know we want to help the the inmates the formerly you know incarcerated inmates w convicted want to help them get really graded back into society find a way and reconnect them to the community and their families i mean because like i was separated from my child i want you know hope to get reconnected if they have families still around so well