Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. There are no words to describe the pain Byron Halsey has endured in his life time. Mr. Halsey was falsely accused and convicted in 1988, of the brutal rape and murders of his female companion’s two children. Halsey escaped the death penalty but was sentenced to two life terms plus twenty years. After spending nineteen years in prison, DNA evidence cleared Halsey of the crime and he was exonerated and released on bail last week. The picture published in The New York Times shows Byron Halsey sitting beside his attorney looking stunned with a single tear rolling down his cheek, his hands cuffed and folded thoughtfully beneath his chin. It’s almost as if the reality of the news of his new-found freedom hasn’t really hit him yet. No one can imagine the nightmare of being wrongfully accused, then convicted and sentenced to life in prison. The only thing that could possibly be worse then this scenario is being sentenced to die for a crime you did not commit and that is exactly what’s happened to fourteen of the two hundred people found not-guilty by the Innocence Project, a legal clinic at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in Manhattan.

According to The NY Times the Innocence Project has used DNA evidence to vacate the wrongful convictions of two hundred people since January 1989. In a summary of the work of the Innocence Project, Chris Conway reports that the typical prisoner cleared by the project served an average of twelve years in prison, 88% were convicted of sexual assault, fourteen were on death row, 75% were convicted by inaccurate eye witness testimony or mistaken forensic science. Forced confessions after long interrogations were another popular feature at these trials. Byron Halsey signed a confession after thirty hours of questioning. NY Times reporter Tina Kelley says Halsey, “…had a sixth-grade education and severe learning disabilities.” One of Halsey’s original attorney’s Delores Mann, says Mr. Halsey had maintained his innocence from the beginning. “I’m hoping the case sheds light when the bill goes to the Assembly, so the death penalty will be taken off the books,” she said. The sad sick irony of this particular case is the DNA evidence recovered from the crime scene pointed to the man who testified against Byron Halsey, a neighbor, Cliff Hall, who is currently in prison for three sexual assaults. Those sexual assaults occurred after the victims in the Halsey case were brutally assaulted and killed. So many victims, so much loss.

If you have ever in your life rooted for someone to die in a death penalty case, thought that they surely deserved to die, thought of a murder case as open and shut, justified your feelings by saying to yourself it’s justice, ‘an eye for an eye.’ You need to look very closely at the results of the Innocence Project. When two hundred innocent men are convicted and sentenced to prison for crimes they didn’t commit and fourteen of those men are sentenced to die, you know that there are countless more that are behind bars at this very moment that are also innocent and more disturbing than that are the men that are already dead that were innocent. We can’t take that back. If you are so heartless that you think that’s OK in the grand scheme of things, I’m scared of you, because if our criminal justice system could do that to them they could certainly do that to you or someone you love. You need to take a step back and remember where you live and who we are. We live in the greatest and fairest country in the world. In the United States of America we are all innocent until proven guilty. We have a presumption of innocence and in our rush to judgment and rush to justice, in our mad dash to make someone pay for the violence that is devouring our society, too many men are paying with their lives. This madness must stop. If that means mandatory life sentences for murder and other brutal crimes I’m fine with that, at least the accused will still be alive to fight for justice.