Journalists like DNA exoneration stories.  Who couldn’t feel for a guy who has suffered through a decade or more of prison hell for somebody else’s crime.  The exoneration story is becoming a media staple, especially here in the Dallas Metroplex.   Everytime you turn around another innocent person is walking out of prison or being freed from parole as cameras roll and reporters scribble. 

Recently, these stories have featured people who have struggled to maintain stable relationships, a decent job and a religious faith after being set free.  The horrors of prison life, the humiliation of registering as a sex offender, and the mind-boggling ineptitude of the criminal justice system leave a mark.  Some of these guys bounce back with remarkable resiliency; others are down for the count.

This morning, a story in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram told the story of John Michael Harvey’s post-exoneration saga.  It hasn’t been an easy ride.  Harvey’s health has recovered and he’s got a girlfriend, but the faith he lost in prison hasn’t returned and the emotional walls haven’t come down.  Here’s a telling quote:

“You might think it is a dumb or ridiculous thing to say, but I proved my innocence and I’m free now – but the price was too high,” Harvey said. “I remember when I first got out my cousin says, ‘You won! You finally won!’ No, the punishment stopped, but what did I win?

Last week, the Dallas Morning News featured a story about David Pope, the first inmate exonerated by DNA evidence in Dallas County seven years ago.  Mr. Pope still lives with his mother–the two seldom speak.  Wome adapt well to the peculiar rhythms of prison life that they have difficulty functioning in the free world.  David Pope appears to one of them.  Consider this:

“There were a lot of good guys in there,” he says, noting that troublemakers are usually separated from the general population. “When you’re living in that environment, around hundreds of people, there was an energy. And when you get out, that’s gone,” he says.

 Some ex-inmates commit dumb crimes just to get back in the joint.  It isn’t that they enjoy being in prison that much; they just don’t know what to do with themselves in the free world.

Another Dallas Morning New Story features the more upbeat experience of exonerees who have made a healthy readjustment to the outside world.  Sadly, these men express little sympathy for fellow exonerees who can’t reconnect with family and the working world.

Though he knows how hard it is to find work as a parolee and sex offender, (James Giles) has little patience for people who say they can’t get hired. “They don’t have the determination,” he says. “If you don’t give me a job, I’ll make my own job. That’s what they don’t have – that zeal.”

Many inmates, innocent or guilty, respond to the free world like military veterans with post traumatic stress syndrome.  Others struggle for a few years before regaining their equilibrium.  When we lock up innocent people (or when the guilty spend too much time behind bars) we eliminate potential employees and create unnecessary public safety hazards.

I wish journalists would start asking why so many innocent people are being prosecuted and convicted.  Many of these stories (the Star-Telegram piece on John Harvey is a good example) contain strong evidence that exculpatory evidence has been withheld from defense counsel.  As I have argued elsewhere, investigators, prosecutors and jurors are driven by a desire for closure.  The passion to nail somebody is so strong that sometimes anybody will do.  Busy professionals want to clear their desks and move on to the next case; they hate question marks and love exclamation points. 

Journalists are often reluctant to hold criminal justice professionals accountable–they depend on these people for valuable information.  Still, there is a growing awareness that the system is badly broken and needs fixing.  If DNA evidence has exonerated so many people, shouldn’t we assume that hundreds of innocent people are doing time in Texas for crimes they didn’t commit.  Few cases involve DNA evidence.

These questions form the unstated sub-text of the new journalistic genre: the exoneration story.