When someone commits a crime and is arrested, their whole time in prison can be a constant hell, sometimes filled with regret for the crime they committed, or anger at their own clumsiness for letting themselves get caught.
The problem comes when you have not committed any crime and a judge or jury sends you to prison for something you did not do. Every hour behind bars, every day, every week and every year is hell, because you cannot even feel remorse when there is nothing to feel remorse for.
When this question came up in a Quora thread, none other than Michael Morton answered it. Who is Michael Morton?
Mr Morton was convicted of murdering his wife in 1987. He spent 24 years and 7 months in prison for a crime he did not commit. Finally, in 2011, thanks to the efforts of the US Innocence Project and advances in DNA technology, he was cleared of all guilt and released. Yesterday his book Getting Life went on sale; in it he tells his story and the positive message (what choice did he have?) of spending 25 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
What does it feel like to be wrongly convicted?
Morton says he remembers perfectly the day of his arrest and his first night in jail. He says he was stunned, completely numb and disoriented, not even sure what was happening, because it was a radical turn in his life: not only the pain of having lost his wife, but being punished for it.
His answer, in paraphrase:
All personal control was torn away by the government. I no longer controlled what I ate, where I slept or where I could go. My whole life at that point was controlled by the laws of the state. In a situation like this, the power of the government becomes more than obvious, as you watch your image pass out of your control and into that of the media, who will make you look guilty in the eyes of the public whether you committed a crime or not.
The first months of life in prison are a constant process of adapting to a completely different society with two very basic rules: obey, and keep your feelings to yourself, always holding on to the hope that everything will be resolved, that someone will find the truth.
But as the years go by, that hope fades, and apathy becomes the mask you show the outside world, while inside, anger and bitterness keep circulating until they consume you. Thoughts of revenge fill your free time, while in your dreams you fantasise that when you wake up you will discover it was all a dream and that you are really still living a normal life.
But when the decades pile up, acceptance comes, and an understanding of this new life you have been dealt. You turn to faith, because it is all you have left, and you start to appreciate things you had never stopped to think about before, like the behaviour of animals, the joy of children, and even your relationships with your enemies, which could have been better without ever coming to enmity.
It may sound like a cliché, almost trite, but time wears you down, and in the end, if you are lucky, trials like this make you a better person and make you stronger and more self-assured. In the end you even look for the positive side of the experience, and even come to think it was what you needed. Overcoming these hard trials is what makes us who we are.
Other Quora users say they followed Michael Morton’s case closely, and that many people thought he had been set up, since there was no solid evidence to justify convicting him; according to them, it was for political reasons, because someone had to be found guilty so the case could be closed and the public reassured.
Not an isolated case
Every year, thousands of innocent people around the world are imprisoned and deprived of their freedom for years until the truth comes out, while in states that have the death penalty, the truth often emerges only after the innocent prisoner has already been executed.
Clearly, many judges do not apply a basic principle of justice:
“It is better to have a guilty man on the street than an innocent man in prison.”
Some time ago I watched a documentary about people who had been wrongly imprisoned, and most of them were never able to lead a normal life again, despite trying to take something positive from such a hard trial.
Featured image: Lauren Gerson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
