Children of the Exonerated

Today on the ‘Young People For’ blog, Innocence Project intern Vincent Pullara, Jr. writes that wrongful convictions don’t only inflict suffering on the innocent defendant and the victims of the crime, but also on their families – especially their children.

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?

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."

Read Vincent’s full post here

. (YP4 blog, 06/05/08)