Once again we have yet another example of an innocent man spending many many years in prison for things they didn't do. This makes me so angry to see things like this happening. All I can say is thank God for The Innocence Project and others like it that are doing everything they can to make sure that the wrongs of our justice system is righted.
This is just another instance of my long held belief that until this sort of thing doesn't happen, then we should not have the death penalty. Until the justice system can assure everyone that there is no way an innocent person will be sentenced to prison for crimes they didn't do, whether it's a police set up, or lying witnesses, or an overzealous prosecutor, or racist prosecutions, then there's no moral justification for continuing with capital punishment.
I mean this man lost the prime years of his life. He was 19 years old when he was wrongly imprisoned for this heinous crime, and I think it's crazy not only that he lost so many years of his life, but to realize that when he had gone in, there were no cell phones. His mother was speaking to him through a cellphone at the courthouse when he was freed, and he didn't even know what it was.
courtesy of the Tampa Bay Online:
Out of custody for the first time in 35 years, the Lake Wales man had been wrongly convicted. Genetic evidence — unavailable when Bain was tried in 1974 — was tested three decades after a 9-year-old boy said he was raped, and it showed Bain to be innocent.
"He was just not connected to this particular incident," said Polk State Attorney Jerry Hill.
Relatives and friends greeted Bain as he walked down the steps of the courthouse. They cheered, clapped and wept.
Bain, who wore a black Innocence Project T-shirt that said "Not Guilty" in big red and white letters, did not appear to shed a tear. He was relieved. He was not angry. He was not bitter. He held no grudges. God will take care of him, he said, and He will deal with the real rapist, wherever he is.
A family member handed him a device and Bain gingerly took hold of it. On a tiny speaker, his mother's voice asked about him; told him to hurry home, that she was waiting for him. Bain looked around for help. He had never used a cell phone before.
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