Chapter 1

I woke up the way I usually do, doused in a cold sweat, not certain where I am, my head swimming, lost in some murky, indefinable terror. It always takes me a few seconds to realize it’s over. I’m no longer waiting on death row, waiting to die for a murder I didn’t commit, the murder of my beloved wife, Sara.

I’m no longer trapped in a cell surrounded by the dregs of society, the most dangerous, vicious, blood thirsty creatures our society has produced. I no longer have to live every moment like I’m in a war zone, surrounded by violent men who would just as soon kill me as look at me.

It has been almost a year since they arrested the man who killed my wife, the man who really killed her. But he wasn’t their first choice. The cops arrested me shortly after she was murdered, I guess because they couldn’t find anyone else to pin it on without actually having to do a little police work.

The prosecutor manufactured the evidence he needed to convict me from thin air. He had apparently based his belief that I did it on the adage that when a woman is murdered it’s usually the husband who killed her. At the same time he hid exculpating evidence that was uncovered before my trial because it inconveniently would seem to indicate I wasn’t guilty. That would, after all, tend to distract the jury and ruin his perfect record of convictions.

I was convicted and sentenced to death. I must have been guilty or they wouldn’t have arrested me. Right?

I would probably have been executed if it weren’t for a group of students at a local law school who started looking into my case as a class project. They were an industrious and diligent little group. They found, among other things, a copy of the pertinent security camera footage the prosecutor thought had been destroyed. It showed the real killer leaving the scene of the crime.

Even with all the evidence they uncovered it still took my little group of supporters from the law school several months to have me exonerated and released. The system fought them tooth and nail until they finally got the press involved.

I received some small satisfaction when in a remarkably short amount of time the prosecutor was disbarred and my defense attorney was censured. But that didn’t come close to making up for the nearly three years I spent on death row.

I was, as you might expect, incredibly happy to be released. Prison is a terrible place to live. There were a lot of things I missed while I was in there; privacy, security, beer, good food, fresh air and the ability to go for a walk if I wished.

But without question the thing I missed most of all was silence. The noise in a prison is deafening and constant. For a quiet man like me it was maddening. I mean that literally. It nearly drove me mad. There’s just no way to cope with it.

I remember walking out of that prison like it was yesterday. I remember being surprised at the reaction of the guards. From the hostile way they glared at me you would have thought I was attempting to escape over the fence. They acted like I was somehow pulling a fast one. They seemed to believe I must really belong there, no matter that the man who killed my wife confessed when presented with the evidence.

I remember standing outside of the prison gates, closing my eyes and enjoying the quiet and my first breath of free air in years. It smelled somehow cleaner. It even tasted better!

The young law students whose hard work made this possible were waiting for me with their professor when I walked out of there. They all rushed up and hugged me. I cried then. I cried when I was told my wife was murdered. And I cried when those kids embraced me. Those are the only two times in my life I can remember crying.

I owe those kids everything. I owe them my life. But it wasn’t until that moment it occurred to me that free or not, my life has been destroyed. My wife is dead. I wasn’t even allowed to attend the funeral. My once prosperous business folded up and disappeared, another victim of the miscarriage of justice that was my trial. None of my clients doubted for a moment there had been a mistake when I was arrested. But still they all drifted away to my competitors at the earliest opportunity. My small but fast growing business went belly up even before the guilty verdict was read.

The students took me to a small party they arranged in my honor to celebrate my release, my exoneration. I was cornered by the editor of the university newspaper for an interview as soon as I arrived. I brushed off the local press. I suppose I’ll have to deal with them eventually. I’m just not ready for that yet. But I sat down with the editor of the university paper for an interview. I felt like I owed them that much and more. And it would provide me with an opportunity to tell them all how much I appreciate what they did for me.

The editor is a beautiful young woman, very intelligent. But it took me a few minutes to realize how sharp she was and take her seriously. She looked very, very young. I quickly realized she’s older than she looks and has a lot on the ball. I started to give her the attention she deserved. It was harder than you might imagine. I find that you run into very few pretty women while locked up on death row. I had a hell of a time looking her in the eye as we talked.

I answered her questions as honestly as I could. At every opportunity I expressed my gratitude to the students who worked on my case and to the school for giving them the latitude to pursue it. Everything was clicking along fine until she asked, “Aren’t you bitter?”

It’s a question I should have been anticipating. But I had to sit back and think about it. I wasn’t sure what that meant. It seemed to imply that I’m different now and I suppose I am in some ways. But it also implies that the changes that were forced on me by this experience made me less good, twisted, shriveled up inside to some degree. I didn’t think that had happened to me.

After a long, thoughtful silence during which she sat patiently, watching me and waiting for an answer, I finally said, “I don’t think so. I’m changed. You can’t go through what I did and not be changed. You can’t live where I lived for the last three years and not be changed.

“I’ll admit I was delighted when I learned the prosecutor was disbarred. He deserved that. I feel a lot of resentment towards the people who fought those young people even after it was obvious to everyone I wasn’t guilty. I think that was the hardest part of all of this to understand.

“I’m certainly changed. But no, I don’t think I’m bitter. I’m in a room full of very nice young people right now. It’s hard to look at those great kids and not feel hopeful. No. I’m not bitter.”

I meant it when I said it. But I’ll admit that there were times in the months that followed when I was struggling to get my life back in order that I had to remind myself of that conversation. The next few months were not easy.

After the party I needed to rent a car. My vehicles were in storage and it would be days before I could get them out and get them running. That was when I ran into the first of the many obstacles I would face after my release. No one had thought to unfreeze my assets. I had money in the bank. But I couldn’t touch it.

I was able to straighten that out in a couple of hours with a phone call because the DA’s office was scared to death of the wrongful prosecution lawsuit they were expecting. My assets were released after the exchange of a few faxes between the DA’s Office and the bank. But my credit cards and debit cards were useless.

The assistant manager of the car rental agency took pity on me and drove me to my bank so I could get some cash. I was also able to get a debit card on the spot. Once my immediate banking needs were attended to we went back and completed our transaction.

I left the lot in a rental car and drove to my house. I almost cried again when I saw it. It had been vandalized and ransacked, repeatedly from the looks of it.

I attempted to have my belongings placed in storage and get a realtor to rent the house out or even sell it when I was sent to prison. But every move I made was blocked by my in-laws who blamed me for the death of my wife, never once giving me the benefit of the doubt, never believing for a moment that I might be innocent.

I shall never understand how they could have believed for a second that I could have killed my wife. They knew how much in love we were. I was surprised by their instant acceptance of my guilt because we had been so close. I was closer to my wife’s family than I was to my own!

But from the moment I was arrested they hired an attorney to impede every effort I made to protect our house and belongings under the guise of protecting my wife’s estate.

I walked through my house, the home I shared with my wife since shortly after our wedding day. We met in college and married two weeks after graduation. The day on which we would have celebrated our tenth anniversary fell on my second day on death row.

Now I’m alone. I’m thirty-six years old. My home has been all but destroyed. My prized possessions have been taken or were destroyed and are strewn about the house.

My wife’s jewelry is gone. Our leather furniture, the pieces which were too large to steal, are slashed and torn. As I walked through the house I smelled the strong odor of urine in every room. But the thing that disturbed me the most was the destruction of my book collection.

I’ve collected a lot of books over the years. I could never bring myself to get rid of a book. Now they’re torn to shreds and scattered throughout the house, not much more than confetti. I was so devastated by their loss that I hardly noticed the holes in the sheetrock, the ruined carpets, the shattered remnants of the happy home I once shared with my wife.

I saw nothing in the house to salvage and no reason to ever return. I turned around and locked the door behind me for the last time, more from force of habit than any thought of protecting my property. I drove to a nearby strip mall in a daze. I bought what toiletries I would need and enough clothes to last a week. Then I went to a decent extended stay motel in a quiet part of town and rented a small suite.

Over the next several months I began trying to put my life back together. I rented a quiet apartment. I have always loved peace and quiet but it has become almost a fetish for me now. While incarcerated over the last three years I missed quiet more than I missed freedom. I only lived on death row for two weeks before I began to look forward to my execution. I quickly attempted to put an end to the automatic appeals and requested the earliest possible execution date.

They even fought that! They wanted me dead, but not for a while. I knew that I couldn’t survive in that place. My sanity couldn’t survive in that place. Not for long.

Now I’m free. But free to do what? I’m struggling to put my affairs back in order and figure out what I’m going to do with my life. I hired someone to restore my house and put it on the market as soon as possible. I knew the minute I saw it I could never live there again.

I checked on all of my CDs at the bank. They’ve been in limbo since my arrest. Like my checking and savings accounts they were frozen. But at least they continued to accrue a little bit of interest over the years.

I checked on my investments. My wife and I accumulated sizeable 401Ks. Our assets still had to go through probate. I’ve been unable to do that while convicted of causing her death.

I finally got the insurance company to make good on my wife’s life insurance policy. That was a lot harder than I expected. Even with the proof of my innocence they acted like I was still somehow responsible for my wife’s death. They didn’t pay off until I threatened to sue them.

Probate went quickly once my in-laws stepped out of the picture. I tried once to reach out to them. But whether because of guilt for the way they treated me or because their hate for me was too ingrained now to get past it, they rebuffed me. I wasn’t inclined to try more than once. I had some pretty hard feelings of my own when it came to the way they treated me.

Six months after my release I still hadn’t filed a claim against the DA’s office for my fraudulent arrest and conviction. They were pretty nervous about it. The circumstances in my case were pretty egregious and they were aggravated by the almost immediate demise of my once lucrative business.

I honestly had mixed feelings about filing a claim. The terrible things that happened to me were the result of the efforts of one overzealous, unprincipled attorney, his assistants, and two cops. They have all been punished.

I feel I’m owed something. My life has been destroyed. But I don’t feel like the people of the state owe me anything and ultimately they’ll get stuck with the bill if I file a wrongful prosecution claim.

I heard from the DA several times, asking me about the status of my claim. I considered filing a claim for some token amount, just to put an end to the suspense. Then one day, totally out of the blue, the DA invited me to a meeting in his office.

I was certainly free. I had no job, no career, no prospects.

I attended the meeting at City Hall. Also in attendance were about two dozen people, attorneys and politicians representing or in the employ of the city. Before they told me why I was there someone, I don’t actually remember who, insisted that I should have an attorney.

I’m not very fond of attorneys right now. I politely declined.

When everyone was seated some guy from the Mayor’s Office handed me a folder and told me how sorry everyone was for what happened to me. He said that the folder contained a settlement offer and that I should take it to an attorney and discuss it. I guess they got tired of waiting for me to submit a claim.

I opened the folder and scanned the document. It was an offer to settle any and all claims I might have against them for fifteen million dollars, five million for each year I was imprisoned. There was no mention of compensation for the near destruction of my home or the collapse of my business.

I felt the strongest urge to tear it up in front of them and tell them I don’t want their money but I suffered a sudden attack of sanity. I pulled out my pen and asked, “Where do you want me to sign?”