I really am innocent!

Reading the headlines, i noticed one that stuck out to me, the one about the guy who has been in jail since he was a teenager for a crime he did not even commit.  He is one that really is innocent.  How sad.

“Two half-brothers who were convicted in the 1983 rape and murder of an 11-year-old North Carolina girl were ordered free Tuesday, after a judge ruled that they had been wrongly imprisoned thanks to newly discovered DNA evidence.” That is the headline that blew me away.

I think about Leon Brown and my heart hurts a little not just about the fact that he was convicted of a crime he was innocent of, but of his lost childhood. Your early teen years are so important in shaping so many things that you do with your life.  He never got to go to a prom or winter formal, he probably did not even have a real relationship, never went on a real date, and he never got to trust in adults.  Think about the holidays and birthdays he missed with his family, 31 years worth.

I don’t know if you can re learn trust, but this young impressionable 15-year-old will never get back those years where you learn to trust other adults around you.  Those other adults that he is now around are all in prison.  I am sure they are not the trustworthy type.  I think that it will probably damage his core on a level that he is not even aware of at this point.

If he becomes a parent how does he do that without trust for others, how does he teach his children now? I wonder if they are going to have long-term therapy services for him, it’s not as if he can walk out of prison and go get a great paying job with benefits, he has no skills, not only job skills, he does not have any skills on dealing with people in the workplace.

I really don’t know what we can do to make this better, but I know with two sons, and a grandson, it makes me think that we need to find a way to get the ones that are innocent the proper channels to tell their side and really find the evidence they need to be found innocent before we lose more of our young men to this horrendous reality.

Leon Brown, 46, has been in jail since he was 15 for a murder he didn’t commit He’ll be released tomorrow  I will be thinking of him and his family and all that they have lost and I will be praying he can recover from this injustice.  Do you think you could recover from something like this?

You can read more about the story here.  http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2-nc-men-convictions-overturned-1983-killing-article-1.1925372