photo credit: Steven Hirsch/New York Post
“It’s PTSD that all of us in this sort of fraternity suffer,” Herman Atkins told NBC News, in a story this week about the lasting trauma of wrongful convictions on Black men convicted of crimes they didn’t commit. Black Americans make up half of all exonerees, despite being only about 13% of the nation’s population.
In 2000, DNA evidence cleared Atkins of a rape conviction. Even two decades later, he told NBC News, he’s constantly seeking to establish alibis, hoarding receipts and staring into security cameras, just to avoid being wrongfully accused of a crime again. “Being in prison when you know you shouldn’t be there is hard to describe. It’s crushing,” Atkins said. “You are fearful of death almost every second, conditioned in ways that bring on paranoia and anger.”
Read the article by Jamiles Lartey at The Marshall Project.
“Former NH detective James McLaughlin, the shady detective who was instrumental in pursuing lie after lie about Fr. Gordon MacRae sending him to a long prison term in 1994, was prominent on the Laurie List for “Falsification of Records” and/or evidence. Over 28 years of wrongful imprisonment in the New Hampshire State Prison, MacRae has consistently asserted that the case against him was built on lies, cheating and distortions aided and abetted by a dishonest police officer.”
