Freed in Houston and Free in Missouri

by Matt Kelley · 2009-05-03 06:06:00 UTC
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On Thursday, Gary Alvin Richard was walked out of a Houston courtroom a free man for the first time in 22 years, after DNA testing called his 1987 rape conviction into question. Prosecutors will decide whether to retry him - I haven't reviewed the facts of the case yet so I don't know what's in question. But Richard is free and his case raises further questions about the troubled Houston crime lab of the 1980s and 1990s.

The Houston lab has been shut down twice this decade due to signs of misconduct, and an official audit of tests from 1980 to 1992 found serious problems in hundreds of cases. At least three people have been exonerated by DNA testing after faulty tests by the Houston lab led to their wrongful convictions - Richard could be the fourth if his exoneration becomes official.

Meanwhile, the Columbia Missourian did a great feature on the exoneration of Joshua Kezer (above) and his first two months of freedom. Kezer, who spent 16 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit, was 18 when he was arrested. He's been enjoying life (and struggling to adjust) since his release.

Kezer gets carsick even on short rides out to dinner. The fork and knife set before him are comically huge after eating every meal for so long with a small plastic spork. The call of frogs along the MKT Trail seems absurdly loud.

But none of this really bothers him. His reactions to life these days are childlike.

..."You go from doing 16 years in prison to instant freedom — how do you really process that? I’m still processing that,” Kezer said.

CBS' "Sunday Morning" did a great piece recently on the life after exoneration for three people proven innocent after serving years in prison. Watch the piece below.

(Full disclosure: when I'm not blogging here at change.org I'm the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project, which represents defendants seeking to overturn wrongful conviction based on DNA tests. Any views expressed here are my own.)


Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
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