Exonerated Nation Victoria Valenzuela + Sarah Kim

Writing by Victoria Valenzuela Drawings by Sarah Kim

In 2011, Obie Steven Anthony was exonerated after serving 16 years in the California prison system for a crime that he did not commit. Anthony, who was 19-years-old at the time he was convicted, was charged with murder with three counts of robbery as well as attempted murder. Although he was not at the crime scene and there was no evidence linking him to the crime, the use of official misconduct, mistaken identification, and informant testimony all played a role in Anthony’s wrongful conviction.

Before Anthony was unfairly convicted of these crimes, he was a high school student in South Central Los Angeles, contemplating different career paths under the care of his mother. He was considering furthering his education to work in the dental field, and after working with the California Conservation Corps under the Department of Forestry, he aspired to become a firefighter.

However, witnessing police tension and abuse of power in his community from a young age caused Anthony to experience a lot of external and internal conflict. At the time of Anthony’s conviction, two detectives intentionally engaged in misconduct to frame him for the crime so that he would go to prison. The prosecution also used the testimony of a known murderer and snitch and the identification of a man who frequently changed his story.

“I was totally shocked. I had no idea, I didn’t even know how to do murder. I didn’t even know where it happened. I didn’t even know anything. I just knew that I was being charged.” Anthony said.

Since 1989, there have been 2,720 exonerations of innocent people from prisons and death row. According to Jonathan Delman, a USC alum from Long Island, New York who is currently studying law at the Cardozo School of Law with the Innocence Project, an exoneration

occurs when someone has been convicted for a crime that they did not commit and is released from prison short of their term because their innocence has been proven. To combat this, the Innocence Project works to free innocent people from prison and reform the criminal justice systems to prevent and encourage accountability on wrongful convictions.

According to Delman, the Innocence Project has a team of social workers that helps exonerees through their transition process, in anticipation that many will encounter issues finding jobs, housing, and navigating technology. Additionally, there are 35 states that offer monetary compensation to exonerees, although statutes vary by constituency.

Common wrongful conviction causes include faulty forensic evidence, eyewitness misidentification, police or prosecutorial misconduct, false confessions and jailhouse informants. Race and socioeconomic status are also major factors in wrongful convictions, which can play into inadequate defense and jury bias, according to Delman.

“The image of Black people, particularly Black men behind bars, has just become so grossly standardized in our country … I think when grisly acts are committed like murders and rapes, the police, who in many jurisdictions are elected officials, feel pressure to put someone behind bars, even if they’re not sure who it is. They know that’s going to have to be done by a jury so they go after Black men. It’s a hard, disgusting fact,” Delman said.

Including Anthony’s case, half of all exonerations involve an innocent Black person. Although Black people make up only 13% of the population in the United States, they are far more represented in the carceral system than any other race.

With no criminal record or history in youth detention, Anthony found it difficult to adjust to life in prison, now living with men who had been incarcerated as long as he had been alive. Being illiterate, having no support, and grieving his mom that had recently passed away while he was incarcerated, Anthony said he had to keep a straight face and act as if he had been accustomed to it all.

It wasn’t until 2008 that the Northern California Innocence Project and the Loyola Marymount Law’s Project for the Innocent stepped in to help Anthony prove his innocence.

After three and a half years of fighting the case, the group of attorneys and college students was able to help Anthony win his freedom and be exonerated of all charges.

“You have no help. Your cries for help are a void because there is no one who’s going to help.

You are left to help yourself out of a horrendous situation,” Anthony said.

Anthony compared being exonerated to falling off a boat and not knowing how to swim and then drowning but then being pulled up, gasping for air. He said that the feeling of knowing you almost drowned and the relief of finally being safe is similar to an exoneration.

After the 18 years Anthony spent wrongfully convicted, he faced many challenges adapting to life outside of prison. Being sentenced as a 19-year-old and exonerated at 37-years-old, Anthony felt like he grew up in prison. When he had come out of prison, he noticed more diversity and interracial relationships than before his incarceration in the early 1990s; he also had to adjust from the typical male-to-male dominant, controlling conversations he experienced in prison. Additionally, Anthony had to learn how to use the many technological advancements that came out in the 2000s — like not knowing how to take a photo with a phone.

Although Anthony was able to live with his fiance after his exoneration, he still struggled to find a job and to acquire a California state ID and Social Security Card, which are disposed of after 10 years of inactivity. After sharing his story with California legislators when originally advocating against prosecutorial misconduct, Anthony inspired Obie’s Law, a law put in place to provide wrongfully convicted people with reintegration resources following their exoneration.

In 2015, Anthony founded Exonerated Nation to create a platform for exonerees from all over the country to come together and help each other heal from the debilitating effects of being put in prison for crimes in which they didn’t commit.

“All of us, even though we have been proven innocent of the crime, still have the stigma of being in prison and being removed from the community. When we go apply for a job, and we go try to get an apartment, we have no rental history, we have no work history. It makes it very difficult for em-

ployers [to employ us] and renters to rent to us, even though they are very sympathetic to the situation that we’ve been through,” Anthony said.

Before Gloria Killian was wrongfully convicted in 1986, she was in law school with aspirations to work in estates and trust legality. Similar to Anthony’s case, Killian’s conviction involved misconduct and relied heavily on the testimony of another person being tried for the same case, yet was given a reduced sentence for naming Killian. With the case Killian was charged for involving murder and conspiracy, she was sentenced to 32 years to life in prison. She served 10 years of the sentence before filing a writ of habeas and being exonerated by a private lawyer after they were able to detract the testimony of the co-defendant who had claimed Killian was the leader of the crime.

Killian was exonerated in March 2002, and was finally released from prison in August 2002. After Anthony was exonerated, the two met in Northern California and began working together to see how Exonerated Nation could best help exonerees. Outside of Exonerated Nation, Killian also helps currently incarcerated men and women work on their cases while they are in prison. She is also very active at USC, having been an important figure in the founding the USC Law Project at the California Institution for Women.

“Incarcerated men and women are no different from you and I. They are not some strange, evil people that came from somewhere. They are exactly us, and fact is, anybody can get into trouble, have problems, or have a bad time,” Killian said.

Zavion Johnson, the eldest of seven children raised in Northern California, was 18-years-old when he was sentenced to two life sentences after being wrongfully charged for murder. Johnson aspired to be a train conductor after seeing the travel and money that his uncle’s friend was able to make in the industry. However, after a tragic day in which Johnson’s baby daughter had slipped and hit her head on the bath and died, officials suspected the child suffered from shaken baby syndrome and arrested Johnson on the day of his daughter’s funeral.

Johnson said that knowing he was innocent and having faith in God kept him fighting for the 16 years and four days that

he was kept in prison. In 2014, Johnson received a letter from the Northern California Innocence Project that his case was in circulation, and in 2015 he was able to meet with his new legal counsel. On the day that Johnson was exonerated, he walked out of the courtroom in a paper suit with no money, clothes, bus ticket or apology. Since then, he said his six attorneys have become his friends and like his family. His first meal post-conviction was Popeye’s chicken and a strawberry soda.

“I look up and it’s 2016, and there are six different people that I had the opportunity to meet who are a part of my team. Work was already being done. I still don’t really don’t understand the dynamics of how and when I would come home, but just to have all these people invested in me, I knew that I was coming home,” Johnson said.

Johnson said he feels that he was kidnapped on his way to college, as he was only 18-years-old when he was convicted. Now, Johnson works with Exonerated Nation and speaks at different universities to raise awareness about wrongful convictions.

Anthony, Johnson, Killian and Delman all seem to agree on what needs to be done to prevent wrongful convictions from happening — accountability. Anthony believes that without accountability, the criminal justice system will continue to ignore procedures set in place. Delman actively supports laws that give defense attorneys greater access to files and put pressure on elected officials to pay attention and make the changes necessary.

“You need to have accountability within the system to have actual reform because accountability is performed,” Anthony said.

Victoria Valenzuela is a student at the University of Southern California currently pursuing a degree in Creative Writing.

Sarah Kim is a student at the University of Southern California currently pursuing a degree in Communication.