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SURVIVING JUSTICE
AMERICA’S
WRONGFULLY
CONVICTED AND EXONERATED
Edited
by Dave Eggers and Lola
Vollen
"There
is no amount of money
they could give me to
replace twenty years of
my life... I missed my
kids' childhoods. I always
wanted to be a father
to them. They can't give
that back. I missed all
of that."
—
Exoneree Calvin Willis
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In
2003, Calvin Willis walked
out of Louisiana’s Angola
State Prison after twenty-two
years of wrongful incarceration
for a crime he didn’t
commit. He had no job, no
money, and no apology from
the system that took two decades
out of his life. Left destitute,
Willis had to fend for himself.
Two years later, he’s
still struggling.
Hundreds of men and women—including
120 on death row—have
been released from America’s
prisons in the last several
years, after incontrovertible
proof of their innocence emerged.
Their trials were undermined
by the myriad problems that
plague criminal proceedings—inept
defense lawyers, overzealous
prosecutors, deceitful interrogation
tactics, bad science, opportunistic
informants, and faulty eyewitnesses.
Their lives were effectively
wrecked. Now, finally free,
they’re facing a new
set of problems, with little
sympathy from society.
In Surviving Justice:
America’s Wrongfully
Convicted and Exonerated,
thirteen exonerees describe
their experiences—the
events that led to their convictions,
their years in prison, and
their new lives outside. Each
oral history is a stark account
of our criminal justice system’s
unforgivable flaws. Sidebars
interspersed throughout the
book offer context for their
cases and the broader problem,
with information on the causes
of wrongful convictions and
on the obstacles exonerees
face in jail and after their
release. Surviving Justice
is an attempt to expose a
disgraceful situation that
continues throughout our country—men
and women sent to prison for
someone else’s crime.
Surviving Justice is
the recipient of the 2005
PASS (Prevention for a Safer
Society) Award for literature
from the National
Council on Crime and Delinquency,
in recognition of its effort
to compassionately illuminate
the stories of individuals
impacted by the criminal and
juvenile justice systems.
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