On September 30, 2003, Calvin was declared innocent and set free from Angola State Prison, after serving 22 years for a crime he did not commit. Like many other exonerees, Calvin experienced a new world that was not open to him. Hitting the streets without housing, money, or a change of clothes, exonerees across America are released only to fend for themselves. In the tradition of Studs Terkel's oral histories, this book collects the voices and stories of the exonerees for whom life ? inside and out ? is forever framed by extraordinary injustice
After spending years behind bars, hundreds of people with new and incontrovertible scientific proof of their innocence have been released from America's prisons. The men and women portrayed in Surviving Justice, and the hundreds of others who have been exonerated, are the tip of the iceberg. There are countless others - thousands by all estimates - who are in prison today for crimes they did not commit. These are the stories of some of the wrongfully convicted, who have managed, often by sheer luck, to prove their innocence. Their stories are spellbinding, heartbreaking, unimaginable, and ultimately inspiring.