Children of the Exonerated

by Vincent Pullara, Jr. (taken from the YP4 - Blog )

Every time a wrongfully convicted person is released from prison, we must wonder to ourselves what it must have been like to deal with such a tragedy. Imagine walking freely in the streets of America one day - doing as you please - only to be picked up and thrown in prison the next. Suddenly, you are expected to be sit for an eternity in a 8 x 8 x 12 prison cell, thinking about the horrors of a crime that you did not commit, a crime you know virtually nothing about. The unnecessary trials and tribulations of a wrongful conviction don't just bring a great deal of pain to the exoneree, but to the exoneree's family as well.

Imagining the life of a child of an exoneree is extremely troubling. America has already produced a whole generation of fatherless children. But when you relate the number of wrongful convictions in this country to the number of fatherless children, you start to wonder about another scary number--how big is the generation of fatherless children as a result of wrongful convictions?

What kind of effect does this have on their perception of the government? How does the child deal with the regular sights and sounds of prisons: barb-wired fences, metal detectors, speculative prison guards, watch-towers and other such things that many people have the privilege of not having to experience throughout their whole lifetime? Imagine the fact that you were in your mother's womb as the process of your father's wrongful conviction is taking place. You are essentially being born into a life of prison and incarceration.

That is the story of Dwayne Allen Dail's son, who was born the same year his father was convicted in North Carolina of a rape he didn't commit. Dail was exonerated by DNA testing in 2007, and released close to his son's 18th birthday. The Charlotte Observer had the following quote from Dail's son, then 18-year-old Chris Michaels. "He's missed my whole life. ... I missed him all the time growing up," Michaels said. "He's here now -- and that's all that matters."

Watch a video of Dail talking about losing precious years with his son here.
Watch Dail's son talk about his father's release here

Similar is the story of Luis Diaz's children. Diaz was exonerated by DNA testing in the summer of 2005 after spending almost 26 years in prison for the rapes of over two dozen women in the Coral Gables area of Florida. As described in a Miami Herald article following his exoneration:

Behind him in a third-floor hallway of the Richard E. Gersten Justice Building surged a crowd of sobbing, laughing relatives Wednesday. Among them...(Diaz's) children who are now the parents of children who had never met their grandfather.

Diaz had his three children waiting for him upon his release in 2005. ''They tore a family apart,'' said Jose, 40. ''I feel it's a miracle and a gift from God,'' said Marilyn, 34. ''I'm just glad he's going to be vindicated,'' said Albert, 31. When you combine their ages at the time of their father's wrongful conviction, 14, 8 and 5--it totals coincidentally close to the 26 years spent fighting to prove their father's innocence.

In a post a couple of weeks ago on the YP4 blog, I highlighted the case of Walter Swift, a Michigan man who was wrongfully convicted of rape and robbery. Audrey Kelly Mills, his daughter, now 27, was one year old when he was convicted. Upon his exoneration a few weeks ago she expressed her feelings of happiness and gratitude for getting her father back. Her joyous feelings were not alone as they were accompanied by feelings of frustration and anger. "I'm angry that this is supposed to be a justice system, and it's nothing even close to a justice system," she said.

Through my work as an intern at the Innocence Project over the past year, I have come across many more examples in addition to those listed above--where the children of the exonerated suffered dearly along with them while they were in prison. They weren't necessarily in prison along with their fathers, but through their words and expressions in the media you can tell that they certainly felt like they were behind bars.