Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

This is the promise laid out in the Declaration of Independence — the founding document of the United States of America, that turns 250 years old this month. The official act, adopted on July 4, 1776, declared the 13 American colonies a new nation independent from British rule and seeded the core principles of freedom and equality that define this nation and what it stands for.

These are bold, idealistic promises. But our record delivering on them is, at best, patchy.

Which leads us to ask: What do these words mean to the men and women who have had their freedom stolen by wrongful conviction and incarceration for crimes they didn’t commit? And when freedom is finally restored, when a promise is finally delivered on, often many decades later, is belief in those core principles restored too?

The Innocence Project has helped free and exonerate more than 250 innocent people since 1992. Cumulatively, that is 6,835 years of freedom denied — 27 times longer than the very existence of this country. Below 16 of them reflect on the answer to these questions.

PART I: Portraits of a Promise Broken

A young mother of two. A high school student with a passion for music. An aspiring firefighter. A Navy veteran. 

Each of the people featured in this story believed in the American promise. Each had hopes and dreams they were chasing when they became ensnared by the criminal legal system for crimes they didn’t commit. And when that happened, each of them continued to hold to America’s promise of “justice for all,” to the foundational principle of “innocent until proven guilty.” And, at this point, our legal system failed them. Coerced false confessions, withheld evidence, and flawed forensics, are just some of the factors that lead to their wrongful convictions.

But they never stopped fighting for their freedom. Some fought from behind prison bars, right up until the moment they were declared innocent in court and walked out as free men and women. Others served the entirety of a sentence that was never theirs to bear, released to continue their fight for justice on the outside — a kind of liberty without true freedom. 

In their own words, the 16 people below describe the raw reality of liberty wrongfully taken.

Editor’s note: The following are accounts as told to the Innocence Project. They have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Renay Lynch

26 YEARS OF WRONGFUL CONVICTION

My wrongful conviction took me from my family and my family from me. It stole those special moments with my children — them graduating from high school, college, my son’s marriage, him going off to the military, my daughter giving birth to my grandchildren. A couple of my siblings passed away while I was in prison and even though they did allow me to go back to pay respects to them, in the penitentiary there’s really no such thing as grieving. Business just goes on as usual, so that was very, very difficult for me.

It was so heartbreaking — at one point during my journey of my wrongful conviction I was thinking about suicide. But by the grace of God, I found the strength and faith to continue going.

I thought about my children and I knew I had to be strong and endure. I had to fight to get out of that place and that’s exactly what I did.

(Image: Mary Kang for the Innocence Project)

Norberto Peets

26 YEARS OF WRONGFUL CONVICTION

I went through a lot of tough times in prison. A lot of tears. Desperation. That’s over 20 years of my life that I am never gonna get back. When I got arrested my son and my daughter were 2 and a half and 4 and a half. And I didn’t get the chance to see them grow up. My grandmother passed away in April 2022. I came out in September 2022. She didn’t get to see me exonerated in May 2023.

Me and my father had a beautiful relationship. And when I was wrongly arrested, my father was still a young guy. And when I came home my father was gone. He had died. He was taken away from me, and that can never be repaired. I’m never going to see my father again. And I still feel some kind of way about that today, because my father died from complications of diabetes. And I wanted to take care of him and maybe he could still be here today.

Perry Lott

30 YEARS OF WRONGFUL CONVICTION

What freedoms did they not take from me? The only freedoms that I had, I had to create. Say like handcuffs. Mr. T, the old TV star, said he used to wear all those gold chains and bracelets to honor the captivity and slavery that our people have gone through since America’s been America, and that stuck with me. When I was arrested and put in cuffs and all of that, I had to fall in love with those cuffs like jewelry because I knew that I can’t break them, I knew that I was innocent, but I was the only person that knew I was innocent. And it felt like a conspiracy, the more I cry innocent, the more look guilty. So my freedom of speech was taken, the freedom to protest, all of that. Writing for me was a way to stay sane, was a way for me to have an outlet, because I couldn’t let out anything, I couldn’t let out a cry, I couldn’t let out a song.

When I was released in 2018 based on forensics, they put me on probation, which was pretty much like being in a cage — still prison, but just a whole lot bigger. I still had to be held accountable for things I didn’t do. I was so intimidated by my past, I was questioning myself all the time. I didn’t know who the hell I was. I had to regenerate my entire personality.

When I went in I was 24 years old, I came out 57 and crippled. I’ll never be able to know what went on behind my back while I was incarcerated — how my children grew up, what I could have, should have, would have been. I don’t even know what kind of dad I would have been.

(Image: Mary Kang for the Innocence Project)

Mark Denny

28 YEARS OF WRONGFUL CONVICTION

Wrongful conviction really took the freedom to become something important in life. I was aspiring to become a boxer and I used to sing when I was young. I wanted to become a singer, but being wrongfully incarcerated took my drive away entirely. It just snuffed out that moment in time where I was really capable of doing these things, and coming out I’m not interested in those things anymore.

Tony Wright

25 YEARS OF WRONGFUL CONVICTION

I served 25 years — that’s 9,074 days — for something I didn’t do. I missed my son’s whole life. He was 4 years old when I was wrongly convicted. He’s now 39.

My mother was everything, man. And I’m just like her. I mean, everyone just loved her. Even the guys on the inside called her “ma.” Me and my son were the two most important things in her life. We could do no wrong in her eyes. But I lost my mother in 1998. She passed away at 44 years old. I was 44 when I was finally exonerated and cleared of all charges.

(Image: Mary Kang for the Innocence Project)

Jeff Deskovic

16 YEARS OF WRONGFUL CONVICTION

I was in prison from age 17 to 32, so I missed out on so many things during those developmental years. I missed births, deaths, weddings, various rites of passage. I didn’t graduate high school, didn’t go to prom.

And what I missed out on became so clear when I was exonerated and released at 32 and I had never lived on my own before or had a driver’s license. I’d never gone shopping, never wrote a check, never balanced a budget.

(Image: Mary Kang for the Innocence Project)

Gerard Richardson

19 YEARS OF WRONGFUL CONVICTION

It’s hard sometimes. We might come home and look alright on the outside, but we’re still damaged in the inside from going through the stuff that we went through. When I got wrongfully incarcerated I had six kids — three girls, three boys. My oldest then was 11. So I ain’t get a chance to see them grow up, I missed the important years of their life and being able to help raise them. They needed their father in their life and I couldn’t help them and be that figure, some of my boys ended up getting in trouble and getting locked up. I didn’t get the chance to see some of my grandkids when they was born and when I came home they were teenagers.

When I first went to prison, my mother asked me: How much time do you have to do? I told her 30 years. She said: By the time you do 30 years, I’ll be dead. I said, no, you won’t. You’ll get to see me come home. And when I was exonerated, my whole family was there in the courtroom, including my mother. She passed away this Easter Sunday, and I’ve been home 13 years, so I had some time with her, but I wish I had more. I miss her just about every day.

(Image: Mary Kang for the Innocence Project)

Marvin Anderson

20 YEARS OF WRONGFUL CONVICTION

Wrongful conviction took my freedom to have a family at a decent age and to live a normal life. I was just 18 when all this happened and when I got out I was 34, so I didn’t live a proper becoming-a-man life. And it took the right to basically get a job. When all this happened I had just applied for the fire academy, and when all this happened I couldn’t do that. I was on parole four years before I was exonerated. So I still had this conviction and every job application asked if you had been convicted of a felony and if you put “yes,” you wouldn’t get hired. 

Eventually, I was able to accomplish some of the things that I wanted when I was growing up. I had a late family — I have three kids and five grandkids — and I did go through the fire academy, graduate, and went back to the fire station that I was in before this all happened. Eventually I became the chief.