(soft dramatic music) (sirens blaring) - The guilty verdict was the first sledgehammer.

That one life sentence was enough for me to crumble.

- [Interviewer] You were in prison for 15 years, nine months, and wrongfully convicted.

- Prison is everything you think it is.

Every time a door opens, your life is on the line.

I was no longer a 19-year-old kid at that point.

I was in survival mode.

(soft dramatic music) - [Tracey] When you talk about the causes of wrongful conviction, a prevalent one is government misconduct or prosecutorial misconduct, - That opened the door for them to begin a review of the case.

(soft dramatic music) - We sometimes are the only people that are willing to listen to them and believe them and hear their stories.

- The Innocence Project represents hope for a lot of people that are incarcerated.

They poured their heart and their soul into proving that I was innocent.

- I couldn't imagine doing anything else with my law degree, but trying to save lives, which is really what they do here.

- And then of course, the people that were actually able to help get released, definitely a new lease, a new beginning to life.

- I like to say that prison was conditioning for me to be an advocate for other people.

Watching some of these lawyers work, it is absolutely prideful for me to be able to replicate that when it's my time.

(soft music) (warm music) - What does it look like to be wrongfully convicted, losing years of your life to an unjust prison sentence, knowing all that time you're innocent?

That's a reality thousands across this nation face.

- However, sometimes, sometimes all it takes is one person or group to believe you.

Enter the Cooley Law School Innocence Project, which is changing the lives of Michiganders who've been wrongfully convicted.

(soft music) - So the project actually started in 2001 as a response to a bill passed by the Michigan legislature, allowing for DNA testing in essentially cold cases.

There have been inmates in our Michigan prisons that have been in since the seventies, eighties, nineties, and that current advances in DNA technology might help shed light on their claims of innocence.

And so the original bill allowed inmates to petition the court for DNA testing in their cases.

And then once the evidence was tested, courts would make a determination about whether that evidence made any difference in their case.

We still had prosecutors that were fighting testing, courts that were denying testing, and usually the argument was some form of, 'cause he's guilty anyway, or she's guilty anyway.

And my predecessors actually went to the Court of appeals a couple of different times to get clarification about how the judges were supposed to approach these cases to give the clients a meaningful review and not just kind of a rubber stamp, to actually give the statute some teeth.

So those were some of the early challenges and victories.

- In a lot of these cases, there was a crime committed.

Those crimes not having been solved means that me and my family and my community still have those people on the streets because despite it being the wrong person, the prosecutor's office, the Michigan State Police, whoever investigated, thinks that this crime has been solved.

(soft upbeat music) - So up until I'd say 2020, we had about five exonerations.

And then in 2020, 2021, we began to partner with the Wayne County, the prosecutor's office.

They have a Conviction Integrity Unit and the Attorney General's office, which has a statewide Conviction Integrity Unit.

And those units are actually arms of the prosecutor's office, which is usually prosecuting people, putting them in prison.

But their vision is very similar to ours, which is to find cases in which there is evidence of actual innocence and to help those people obtain relief.

So that truly transformed things.

We were able to expand staff.

- Going from a student who was very like blind to a lot of these issues, really, to a staff attorney that's in some small way, getting to make an impact.

I don't wanna be colloquial, but it has been life-changing.

It has changed my perspective on our world and system as a whole.

(bright music) I have a client right now who I know without a shadow of a doubt is innocent, but I still have to go visit him at the correctional facility.

And every day I get to go home and be with my family and my friends and go to work.

And I know that he's still sitting there in a cage.

And that's really hard.

- So just since 2020 when I arrived, we've had four more exonerations in those four or five years after kind of 15 years of where we had almost 20 years when we had five.

It really is a phenomenal innocence community here in Michigan who works together to try to get to the truth.

(warm music) (car horn honking) - Kenneth, we we're gonna have a lot of different questions, specific questions and whatnot, but why don't you start by just telling us your story.

(soft dramatic music) - In 2005, I was arrested, charged, and eventually convicted of two counts of felony murder, four counts of attempted murder, and one count of arson.

The crime stemmed from a fire bombing of a home.

And as a result of that fire bombing, two children perished in this horrific house fire.

(soft dramatic music) It was an extremely high profile case because of the ending result of the children.

And once my name came up in the investigation, the police officers kind of locked in on me.

(soft dramatic music) They arrested me, and then they sought to find evidence to prove their theory.

And that was the last time I saw my freedom for over a decade and a half.

(soft dramatic music) We were tried together in the same courtroom, same evidence, same witnesses, and the only difference was there was two different juries.

(soft dramatic music) My jury came back guilty and her jury came back not guilty.

It was a very appalling and shocking reading of the verdict because it didn't make sense.

The prosecution's theory of the case was that we were together and that we had committed this crime together and that we fled together and we were eventually arrested together.

Their theory now had a giant hole in it that made no sense to anyone.

Technically, if she's not there, I'm not there.

So how is it possible that I could be sent to prison?

- Being so young, having all of that happen so quickly, what was going through your mind at that time?

- As a 19-year-old kid, I was blind to how things were progressing.

(soft dramatic music) Based on everything I'd seen on TV and been taught my entire life, like the evidence would prove my innocence.

The guilty verdict was the first sledgehammer.

When that jury came back guilty, they read the charges in succession.

The very first charge was murder.

I was wise enough to know and understand that the sentence for murder, there's only one sentence.

It was life.

It didn't make a difference what they said after that.

I was sentenced to two natural life sentences plus 40 to 60 years.

So that verdict, that verdict changed me as a person.

I was no longer a 19-year-old kid at that point.

I was in survival mode.

(soft dramatic music) (eerie music) When I got to prison, it was difficult.

You have to learn to survive, mentally, physically, emotionally.

Prison is everything you think it is.

Society's worst of the worst are in one concentrated environment.

Every time a door opens, your life is on the line.

I'm trying to process on one end how I got here, on the other end, also trying to manage my emotions while trying to survive in a highly violent environment while also trying to manage the emotions of my family, my kids, all while trying to have these tough questions and answers and arguments with God all at the same time.

You figure it out.

- So enter the Innocence Project.

How long were you in before there was this new glimmer of hope?

- What a lot of people don't know is I was denied by the Innocence Project several times before we eventually got to where we are today.

I was denied by Innocence Projects all across the country repeatedly, specifically with Cooley, I was denied two times before they actually accepted the case.

I was about 13 years in when they agreed to give me a thorough look.

That came about because I'd proven them wrong.

There was a misconception that with arson cases, DNA was not possible.

After doing my own research, I found a case from New York, similar in my case, there were the remains of a Molotov cocktail that were recovered by the investigating officers.

They tested it for DNA and they got a CODIS hit.

I took that case, I printed it out, and I reapplied and I attached it to my application to Cooley to show them, you're wrong, this can happen, and here's your proof that it's happened already.

They began their process for DNA testing, and that eventually led to conversations with the Conviction Integrity Unit.

(bright music) That opened the door for them to begin the review of the case.

(bright music) It was about three years later that I would eventually be exonerated.

(bright music) - What was that moment like when you literally walked out to freedom?

- It was uncomfortable because for almost 16 years, I had grown to expect the worst all the way up until I walked out.

Even standing in that parking lot, my mind kept thinking, "Get the hell away from this place before somebody says that something isn't right, Hey, you gotta go back."

You're constantly processing, something is going to go wrong.

You're expecting something to go wrong.

As happy as I look in that picture, I was shivering.

The inside of me was scream and run.

The outside of me was at peace.

Like, yes, finally, that internal conflict, it was a lot.

- And then what's going through your mind later when you essentially have this big win, but now you're trying to figure out life in a different time period than when you were out before with obviously relationships that are gonna be different than what you had before.

- Relationships has always been a difficult topic for a lot of us because it's hard to communicate pain when all you've been taught was to push it down.

It boils down to prison.

Most men, as we all know, are not taught to be healthy communicators to begin with.

You place us in a highly violent environment where we learn to only speak with our hands or aggression.

You quickly learn to survive.

You either cower or you become predator.

It's not a place for healthy communication.

Once you're released, that's not something you forget.

It doesn't just evaporate because you're free now.

(warm music) I have two boys, they're adults at this point.

I had a relationship with both of them while incarcerated.

My mom, my family were very instrumental in making sure that we saw each other regularly.

But post-release was different.

My youngest son was a senior in high school at this point.

He's got his routine.

I didn't wanna take a heavy-handed approach, but I also didn't want to force them into anything that they weren't comfortable with either, right?

I don't wanna make you be my son.

I don't wanna make you be my friend.

The reality is like I haven't been here, to no fault of my own.

My influence is different in your everyday life.

I think I'm doing the best that I can.

I can't fix what I didn't break, but I also don't know how to repair a harm that I didn't cause.

So it's learning to navigate relationships.

These just happened to be relationships that I can't separate myself from.

- He was a very young man when he went to prison and spent his young adult life incarcerated while his kids grew up.

And while all those things around him, and he has every right to be bitter and resentful, but his attitude is one of, okay, so how can we help make it so that this doesn't happen again?

- I've traded my innocence for experience.

The lived experience that I walk into a room with can't be understated when we're talking about change.

When it comes to people that are making these decisions about positive change or progressive prosecution or police reform, none of them have been where I've been.

None of them have seen the effects of any of these policies that they claim to be better for people.

None of them will ever understand the consequences of the decisions that are being made in these closed door rooms.

The only person that can speak to that in a lot of these rooms is myself and other people that have gone through what I've gone through.

(warm music) There is a lot of misconception about how things work.

Majority of society thinks that when you walk out of prison after an exoneration, the government hands you a bag of money and they send you on your way.

The reality is that it's absolutely false.

They, in fact, it's just been a recent year since I've been home that Michigan began to take care of exonerees or extend resources to exonerees.

The reality is that there was one point in our state where you were treated better if you were guilty and on parole than you were if you were innocent and set free.

People on parole were entitled to specific resources to help them stay out of prison or keep from recidivating and winding up back in prison.

Exonerees were not entitled to those same resources.

It was literally open the door and let you go.

There were no people to call for help.

Another misconception about the process, people assume that when you walk outta prison, your record is clear.

That is not true.

There is an entire legal process that has to take place.

So on top of suffering injustice on the front end, now that I'm free, every time I fill out a job application, this shows up on my background, right?

Nobody knew what to do when the background check came back and it said that I was still convicted of two counts of murder.

Like, how do you explain that?

You don't explain that to an employer.

They're like, "Hell no, he's not coming here."

(laughing) They're not even gonna think twice about denying you employment.

These are all systemic problems.

Problems that that exoneree didn't cause or ask for, or want, but we've gotta figure out how to navigate it.

(soft dramatic music) - And everybody starts at a different place, right?

We have an exoneree who most of his family had passed away, so he was literally starting over.

He didn't have a place to live.

He didn't have a job, he didn't have medical care or anything like that.

Ken's family was kind of there waiting for him when he got home, but there were other things that he needed.

- I had a ton of resources.

I had great lawyers from Cooley Innocence Project.

I had business friends that had gone through school and made something of themselves.

I had family members with countless resources, but it still took me six months to get an ID.

It still took me six months to get a birth certificate.

It still took me forever to get a social security card, and the only people that I had to rely on in those situations were other exonerees.

It was a very burdensome and structurally difficult process to navigate to prove to the government that I was the person you've had in custody for a decade and a half.

It was asinine and it made absolutely no sense to me.

A group of us kind of got together and we were like, hey, we need to do something about this.

Like, we need to figure out how to make this easier for the people that come after us.

We know it.

They have no idea what they're about to walk into.

Our families don't know how to help us, but we know how to help us.

So that's kind of where we began.

- Many of our exonerees that we work with are members of the Organization of Exonerees and we spent quite a bit of time with them, and so many of them look like folks that I grew up with that came from my neighborhood that are these young African American men and I truly see in them my brother, my uncles.

It is certainly the case in the criminal justice system as a whole that Black and brown people are disproportionately represented in the prison population, right?

And those who are charged and in the neighborhoods that are policed.

All of those things, and similarly, Black and brown people are disproportionately represented within the pool of wrongfully convicted individuals and the things that they were able to do to really help and be there for one another.

It just always blows my mind.

- We've helped people do a little bit of everything, whether that's furniture for their first apartment or getting enrolled in school, attending each other's kids' birthday parties, taking someone to Lance and to testify in support of legislation for the first time ever in their life, or taking someone on a mental health retreat.

We just took 17 people with shared experience out to the woods, just so that they can decompress.

And to hear so many people say, this is the first time they've ever taken a vacation of their own.

This is the first time they've ever gotten a massage.

This is the first time that they've ever been away from civilization.

That was a proud moment in my growth, in my leadership, in my humanity to be able to share an experience with people that have gone through such a bad thing in their life.

- We have been deprived as a society of these incredible individuals who are doing fantastic things, like starting the Organization of Exonerees and making these huge impacts in the world, and we have them locked up wrongfully so for years.

How many more people like that are in prison that could be giving back to our society that we have completely thrown away?

- They owe nothing to, they don't owe anything to anyone.

In fact, we owe them.

We as society owe them everything, and yet they're out here kind of giving their all to help the people that they left behind, right?

And to help our society understand this issue.

- I like to say that prison was conditioning for me to be an advocate for other people that have been negatively impacted by the system to speak up.

And I wanted it, I wanted it bad because I understood that everyday wasted meant somebody could be dying.

- A client whose case I have worked on since I was a student, tried to take his own life not that long ago.

- So for me, I channeled those bad feelings into helping other people.

I think that's where I find my joy, my pride, my feel good to get up in the morning.

It's like, okay, somebody needs some help today.

Like, that's where it hits home for me.

(soft upbeat music) So for me, the Innocence Project represents more than hope.

They represent strength, power, refusal to quit, inability to lay down.

- I wanna try and help whoever I can and impact whoever I can with the opportunities that have been afforded to me and try to make the criminal justice system a better place.

- They represent a part of me.

watching some of these lawyers work, it is absolutely prideful for me to be able to replicate that when it's my time.

I am a sophomore at Wayne State University.

I'm currently studying political science with a track for law school.

My minor is law.

The goal is to become a innocence attorney.

- I literally told him last time I saw him, "I got a few more years of formal employment," and then I plan to go work for him, in whatever capacity.

No, my future goal, even as I wind down the intensity of law practice, et cetera, is to find different ways to be impactful and to stay in this work.

- All of them are here for the right reasons.

They're not here because they get giant paychecks or corporate credit cards.

They barely get a copy machine around here.

It's important because it hits different.

t's not the same for me as it would be just some regular lawyer that became a lawyer because this is what their family told them they had to do.

It's personal to me.

It's personal for a lot of reasons.

I don't never want to be in a situation where it's anything other than personal.

(soft dramatic music) (soft upbeat music) (soft upbeat music) (soft upbeat music)