This scene is becoming all too common. Men, usually, Black, Latino or poor, are released from our prison systems after decades behind bars, because it was revealed that the DNA did not match or that the witness lied or was coerced by police.

Maybe standard investigative techniques were ignored in the rush to solve a horrible crime. By the time the truth is revealed, the men have spent 5, 10,15, 20 years of their lives behind bars for a crime they insisted they were innocent of, except that no one believed them.

The latest examples of this injustice in our criminal justice system are Ronald Taylor and George Gould of Connecticut. The two men spent 16 years behind bars for the murder of a store clerk. A witness claimed at trial that she saw Gould enter the store and argue with store owner Eugenio Deleon Vega about opening the safe. The woman claimed she heard a shot and then saw Gould and Taylor leaving the store. The two men got 80 years behind bars.

What the woman left out was that she lied. She recanted her statements, explaining that she was a prostitute and heroin addict at the time police were interviewing her and that she was in need of a hit, according to the judge in the case. The police promised to help her get heroin afterward to get over her "dopesickness," she said. The woman says she wasn't even at the scene.

And then a private investigator assigned to the case found that the DNA on a cord used to bind the victim's hands did not match Taylor's or Gould's DNA.

"I've been waiting for this for a while, for a long time, but I always knew it would come to this day," Gould told the press outside of the courthouse.

Cases like this do not have to happen but do happen all too often.


According to the Innocence Project, at least 245 people have been cleared of convictions using DNA evidence since 1989 in 34 states. Seventy percent of those wrongfully convicted are people of color. Sixty percent are African American. The average age when they went to jail is 26, and they spent an average of 12 years behind bars.

The culprit, according to the Innocence Project, besides a system that overincarcerates black men, are false witness testimony, poor investigative practices, police misconduct and incompetent defense lawyers. Many of these men are poor and can't afford a private attorney - add to that the poor training in forensic laboratories.

These are problems that we can fix.

The public is at risk, because the real killer or criminal is still loose in the community. The Vega family has not seen the person who killed their loved one punished for such a horrific act, and as long as these practices continue, this can happen to any of us.

Just look at the case of Dean Cage, a Chicago man who spent 14 years behind bars after being wrongfully convicted of assaulting a 15-year-old-girl. Cage had never even been arrested, and there was no DNA or physical evidence against Cage. And he had an alibi. The only evidence was the witnesses' identification and that process was botched by police, leading the unfortunate victim to identify the wrong man. DNA evidence eventually freed Cage.

Unfortunately, the Connecticut case is not over. Prosecutors have said they are going to appeal the decision. Unless they have some other extremely compelling evidence - which it sounds like they don't because their entire case was dismantled - they should be ashamed of themselves. The judge in the appeal called the pair's conviction "manifest injustice." These men have suffered enough. The community should not stand for this.

To make matters worse, Taylor is undergoing chemotherapy for serious liver cancer. These men should be fully given their lives back, complete with compensation from the state for the years that were wasted in prison.

Taylor had a simple wish upon his release: He wanted to spend time with his wife and family and just "live, just live - live outside those walls." We should demand that prosecutors allow this man to do just that.