{"id":8851,"date":"2018-01-31T06:37:43","date_gmt":"2018-01-31T14:37:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heuermontage.com\/?p=8851"},"modified":"2018-01-31T06:37:43","modified_gmt":"2018-01-31T14:37:43","slug":"the-falsely-accused","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heuermontage.com\/?p=8851","title":{"rendered":"The Falsely Accused."},"content":{"rendered":"

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Imagine you are accused of having committed a horrible crime. You are convicted despite your protestations of innocence. You serve \u00a0your sentence in one of the more inhumane prisons in the country for over a decade. At that point DNA evidence and other material evidence reveals that you were indeed not the perpetrator. You are released, exonerated, given $5000 (for 10 years of your life) and then you meet up with the victim of the crime, whose eyewitness identification of you was the basis for your conviction.<\/p>\n

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How do you reconcile? In the specific case I have in mind, these two became friends; they are now on a lecture circuit warning against the dangers of reliance on often fallible eyewitness identification procedures. \u00a0The ability to forgive on his part boggles my mind. The ability on her part to forgive herself and become a close friend even though she still saw his face in flashbacks of the rape for the longest time, leaves me speechless. Somehow they found a constructive way to integrate the tragedy they shared in different roles.<\/p>\n

Ronald Cotton<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n