Exonerated but not supported, the wrongfully convicted struggle to heal their ‘wounds’

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• Judy Woodruff:

  We have been exploring this week the many challenges people face after incarceration, from getting health care to reconnecting with family.

  But for those wrongfully convicted and imprisoned and then fortunate enough to be freed, those same challenges exist. And, for many, there's even less support than for those who committed crimes and are released on parole.

  Amna Nawaz and producer Frank Carlson report on the struggle that begins after freedom is won.

  It's part of our series Searching For Justice.

• Amna Nawaz:

  What about this, this area? What is this from?

  Ricky Kidd, Wrongfully Imprisoned For 23 Years: Prison. It's all prison pictures.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Over two years ago, Ricky Kidd walked out of a Missouri prison after 23 years behind bars. He'd been wrongly convicted for two murders he always said he didn't commit.

  In the two short years he's been free, Kidd got married, moved into this house, started a business, and welcomed his new daughter, Harmony Justice, into the world.

• Ricky Kidd:

  Look at me, daddy!

  I often say that freedom is the ability to embrace life fully. It feels like freedom because I'm embracing it fully.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Since his release, Kidd's traveled across the country. He put his feet in the ocean for the first time.

  Did you ever think that you wouldn't get out?

  He even came by the "NewsHour" for a 2019 interview with his lawyer, Sean O'Brien

• Ricky Kidd:

  We came to see you all…

• Amna Nawaz:

  I remember.

• Ricky Kidd:

  … a few years ago.

• Amna Nawaz:

  I recognize that set anywhere.

• Ricky Kidd:

  Yes.

  Dawn Elizabeth, Wife of Ricky Kidd: Right now, we have your book, the workshop.

• Amna Nawaz:

  And with his wife, Dawn, he's built a public speaking business, sharing his story, advocating for criminal justice reform, and fighting for others to be freed.

• Ricky Kidd:

  I have a lot to be thankful for today, especially when you compare it against other people who are still languishing in prison for crimes they didn't commit.

• Amna Nawaz:

  On the outside looking in, you check all the boxes, right, home, job, family. Everything seems really good. What's happening inside?

• Ricky Kidd:

  Sometimes, I'm overwhelmed. It's a lot. And it comes out of nowhere. I think, I got this, I got this, I got this. And then I feel like I don't have it. Anxiety, nightmares began to surface, horrible nightmares.

• Amna Nawaz:

  To the public, the story of most exonerees ends on the day they're released and walk out of prison, when, in fact, that day marks the beginning of an entirely new set of struggles ahead.

• Ricky Kidd:

  So, here we are walking into prison.

• Amna Nawaz:

  From the outside, it looks like Kidd has moved on. But, inside, he is grappling with his past.

  In his basement storm shelter, Kidd created a replica of his prison cell, down to the exact same items he had during more than two decades of incarceration.

• Ricky Kidd:

  This was my I.D.

• Amna Nawaz:

  This is your actual I.D.? Missouri Department of Corrections Offender in big red letters, Ricky Kidd.

• Ricky Kidd:

  And they usually call you 528343, not your name. They want you to respond, 528343.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Do you think you will ever forget that number?

• Ricky Kidd:

  No.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Still, he visits this place almost every morning.

• Ricky Kidd:

  Sometimes, I'm thinking about what I have been through, that I was once here. Sometimes, I'm thinking about the other people that are still here.

  Imagine waking up in a maximum Level 5 prison.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Earlier this year, he filmed an online series here, reenacting his prison days. Reliving them became overwhelming, so he stopped.

  Kidd has also struggled with his health. He's a diabetic, and earlier this year had an emergency triple bypass heart surgery. More recently, he's struggled with his breathing, a complication from that surgery. He blames more than two decades of poor prison health care, unhealthy prison food, and the stress of being wrongfully imprisoned and fighting to prove it.

  On top of that, he's received no support nor compensation from the state of Missouri.

• Ricky Kidd:

  You took all my 20s. You took all my 30s, and you took half of my 40s. At that stage, people who have been working and are a little diligent and a little disciplined, they have a little something. Well, I came home at 45 and had nothing.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Is there a way for them to make you whole? Can they do something to make it right?

• Ricky Kidd:

  No.

  I don't think there's nothing they can do to make me whole. There's things they can do to make it better. But even if they did that, against their best efforts, we're still left wounded. We're still left with our wounds. And that's a consequence of a wrongful conviction in America.

• Amna Nawaz:

  On a chilly morning on the other side of Kansas City, Ricky's lawyer, Sean O'Brien, is picking up Joe Amrine, another former client, to go grocery shopping.

  Joe Amrine, Wrongfully Sentenced to Death: So, do you remember Lehman's (ph) case, Sean?

• Sean O’ Brien, Attorney:

  I do remember Lehman's case, because you went with Dan Groathouse (ph)…

• Joe Amrine:

  Right. Right.

• Sean O’ Brien:

  … to talk to the witnesses that eventually exonerated him.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Sean's helped free more than a dozen wrongfully convicted people in his career as a law professor and defense attorney. In 2003, it was Joe Amrine's turn, after spending 17 years on death row.

• Joe Amrine:

  You know, when you know that everybody in the state, everybody in the world wants you dead, there ain't much you can do. There ain't nothing you can do. Just can't imagine that, that everybody wants me dead.

• Sean O’ Brien:

  He could have been executed any time.

• Amna Nawaz:

  For a crime he didn't commit.

• Sean O’ Brien:

  For a crime he didn't commit.

  Every month, they executed one of these 10 men. And then after they execute them at midnight on the first Tuesday of the month, they would come back into the office that morning and issue a new warrant for the next one. About midway through that process, one of his friends, who he had known since junior high school, was executed. And he called me the next morning and said: "I want to be next because I can't do this again."

• Amna Nawaz:

  Since being released, Amrine has struggled, with his health, holding down a job, and meeting basic needs.

  When you got out, what kind of support did you get?

• Joe Amrine:

  I had none whatsoever, no support whatsoever.

  Getting my driver's license, Social Security card, filling out paperwork and stuff, I was lost.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Amrine's depended on help from people like Sean to keep the lights on and keep the refrigerator stocked.

• Sean O’ Brien:

  He's food-insecure, for crying out loud. That's wrong.

  You know, if I don't — if I don't periodically take him to the grocery store, you know, he will call me up and say: "I don't have anything. I haven't eaten in a week."

• Amna Nawaz:

  Across the country, the support and compensation exonerees are eligible for differs drastically depending on where they're convicted; 37 states and the District of Columbia have laws for compensating exonerees in some way.

  But qualifying for and accessing that support is another story entirely. In Missouri, one of the states that has a law on the books, Joe Amrine and Ricky Kidd don't qualify for help because they weren't exonerated through a specific mechanism involving DNA evidence.

• Sean O’ Brien:

  You can count on one hand the number of people who have qualified for support under Missouri's compensation statute. He would be better off if he had been guilty and then released on parole, because a parole officer would help him get public assistance and would constantly be on the lookout for job leads and…

  (CROSSTALK)

• Amna Nawaz:

  He would be better off if he'd actually done the crime? He'd have more support coming out?

• Sean O’ Brien:

  He would be better off if he had done the crime and been released on parole, yes.

• Joe Amrine:

  Yes, I'm mad. I'm still mad. I'm really mad. And I'm going to stay mad. Until the day I die, I will probably be mad, because they took my life.

• Amna Nawaz:

  So far, Ricky Kidd's experience after prison has been very different than Joe Amrine's, and he counts himself lucky.

• Ricky Kidd:

  For the first time, I felt bitterness towards the state.

• Amna Nawaz:

  But the trauma, the loss, the anger, many of those are the same.

  Kidd recently began seeing a therapist to work through those issues. He's currently suing the Kansas City Police Department in civil court, which could take years. Because of governmental immunity, Sean O'Brien says most clients get nothing.

  In the meantime, he's trying to focus on the positive each day, advocating for the friends he left behind, the wrongful convictions he can prevent, and redefining what freedom means.

• Ricky Kidd:

  These are things that I always wanted to happen. And now they happen, so…

• Amna Nawaz:

  Not wasting a day.

• Ricky Kidd:

  Not wasting a day.

• Amna Nawaz:

  For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Amna Nawaz in Kansas City, Kansas.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And you can learn much more about Ricky Kidd's life and case in our podcast "Broken Justice" and about the failures in public defense that led to his incarceration.