The Reality of Being Innocent in Prison

Many people in society often say that “everyone in prison claims innocence.” This is a false reality that is neither true nor in the real world of prison.

How do you tell if someone really is innocent? Who can really answer this question? The news media, the judge, the jury? Or should the facts decide who’s innocent?

According to the United States Constitution, everyone charged with a crime has a presumption of innocence. Anyone accused of committing a crime is “innocent until proven guilty. The accused is entitled to have his or her day in court and be allowed to face the alleged accusations without the prejudgements of people spectating from outside of the facts of any case.

This prejudgment is largely due to the deep-rooted belief that our criminal justice system doesn’t make mistakes and the police “got it right.” The news media and press also play a huge part in societal views of guilt when covering or reporting on crimes committed in communities.

I understand why people outside of prison can think that everyone in prison is guilty, or claim to be innocent. But what is also alarming about this equation is that in my experience (being innocent myself), most guys don’t play the innocence card without being challenged to bring forth facts supporting such a claim. This is because people who claim innocence, and are really not, will get ground up by other prisoners if they can’t produce evidence supporting their claims of innocence. And if often doesn’t end well when that happens.

The reality about innocent people in prison is this: According to the National Innocence Project, since 1989, 3,000 people who were wrongly convicted have been exonerated. In roughly 69% of those exonerations, there was testimony provided by witnesses that proved to be false.

Sixty-nine percent of the first 373 DNA exonerations nationally were from eyewitness misidentification; 43% of the first 375 DNA exonerations were from misuse of forensic evidence; 29% of the 575 DNA exonerations were from false confessions; and 17% of the first 375 DNA exonerations were from jailhouse informants.

In another study by the National Innocence Project, it is estimated that upwards of 5% of all people in prison are innocent. Think about it. Five percent of the over 2 million people currently incarcerated in America’s prisons are estimated to be innocent? That’s a lot of innocent people in prison, right?

In 2021, two reporters for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Samantha Melamena and John Duchneskie, published an  article titled Righting the Scales: Common Factors in Wrongful Convictions and Solutions to Address Them. They found that 95% of the first 21 exonerations made by the Philadelphia DA’s “Conviction Integrity Unit” were from the direct result of suppressed evidence.

Sixty-nine percent of the first 373 DNA exonerations nationally were from eyewitness misidentification; 43% of the first 375 DNA exonerations were from misuse of forensic evidence; 29% of the 575 DNA exonerations were from false confessions; and 17% of the first 375 DNA exonerations were from jailhouse informants.

In Delaware County, Pennsylvania, Nick Yarris was wrongly convicted for a criminal homicide that new evidence proved, after decades on Pennsylvania’s Death Row, that evidence used to convict him was lost or destroyed, and DNA tests proved that he did not commit the crime.

In another Delaware County wrongful conviction case, the same detective who testified at a criminal homicide trial subsequent to this writer’s wrongful conviction also testified as a fingerprint expert at the trial of Ricky Jackson, whose murder conviction was overturned when it was discovered that the detective had used junk testimony in order to convict Mr. Jackson. The Ricky Jackson story was covered in an MSNBC two-part documentary by Lester Holt, titled “When Forensics Fail.”

Another case of outright factual innocence from Delaware County, Pennsylvania is the wrongful conviction of a seventeen-year-old juvenile charged with murder and robbery in an alleged drug deal gone wrong in the City of Chester, Pennsylvania. In this case, there was no direct evidence linking him to the crime, no physical evidence, no fingerprints, no motive or weapon. The only evidence relied on at his trial was two alleged eyewitnesses, a father and son, who were both admitted drug dealers. Both eyewitnesses gave false testimony to the police, and inconsistent statements at the preliminary hearing, and at both trials (the first ending in a hung jury); robbery charges were dismissed at the preliminary hearing (due to the lack of evidence of any robbery), two of the prosecutor’s own experts (medical examiner and gun expert) both provided testimony contradicting both eyewitness testimonies concerning witnessing a close-range shooting, and likewise refuted the father’s trial testimony regarding witnessing the type of gun used in the murder.

The son further testified at the second trial held in the case that police told him what to say. Additional evidence was also discovered that the prosecutor’s office allowed key evidence in the case to be destroyed, without the defense ever having an opportunity to examine it. This is the case of this writer, Rodney Derrickson, who is innocent.

In 2020, this writer wrote a letter in support of another prisoner’s innocence, urging his attorney to pursue the juvenile lifer’s claims of innocence at his resentencing hearing, wherein I said, “The reason I believe it is relevant is because the experience of an innocent person in prison is even more disorienting. The fact that they don’t become bitter or insane is a true testament to their strength, and the strength of their conviction. In my almost 25 years of wrongful incarceration, assisting well over 150 prisoners with court filings as a certified paralegal, I have never met another prisoner who shouted his innocence for years and wasn’t. In my experience, most guys don’t play this card without being challenged to bring forth facts to support such a serious claim.”

What I found most compelling about that prisoner’s case, that I also pointed out, was the fact that there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime, no credible motive, no weapon was found, he was arrested several months later coming from a friend’s house, and in his knapsack were his art supplies and artwork. Another compelling fact was that even the cops thought that they had picked up the wrong person.

These are the demanding kinds of facts that lead anyone interested in knowing those facts, and how to really tell if someone is innocent.