Nick Yarris | |
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 Yarris in 2023 | |
| Born | Nicholas James Yarris May 18, 1961 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer |
Nicholas James Yarris (born May 18, 1961) is an American writer and storyteller who spent 22 years on death row in Pennsylvania after being wrongfully convicted of rape and murder. [1]
Although disputed by some family members, Yarris has stated he was the victim of sexual abuse as a child at the hands of another youth, which led him into addiction to alcohol, drugs and the commission of petty crime in his teens. [2] On December 21, 1981, Yarris and a friend stole a car. Yarris, then age 20, was blasting music while driving under the influence when he was stopped by police in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. [2] The officer and Yarris got into a physical confrontation, and the policeman's gun discharged. Yarris was charged with the kidnapping and attempted murder of a police officer. He was later tried and acquitted of those charges. [3]
While in jail, facing a possible sentence of life in prison, he spotted a newspaper article about the December 16, 1981, murder and rape of Linda Mae Craig, who had been abducted from a Delaware shopping center but whose body had been found in Pennsylvania. Her true murderer is still unknown. In an effort to win favor with the authorities and avoid the consequences of his pending charges, Yarris claimed that he knew who had committed the unsolved rape-murder. When the man he named, whom he had wrongly believed to be recently deceased, proved upon investigation to be plainly uninvolved, Yarris became the number-one suspect. [4] [5]
Yarris was then charged with the abduction, rape and murder of Craig. [2] After a short jury trial, Yarris was found guilty. In July 1982, at age 21, he was sentenced to death. [6] Yarris escaped from custody while being transported to a post-sentence hearing, but was arrested in Florida about a month later, where he identified himself. Florida authorities agreed to return him to Pennsylvania's death row. [7] Numerous appeals and post-conviction challenges proved unavailing. During his time in prison, Yarris taught himself to read, married a prison volunteer visitor, and became the first death row prisoner to seek DNA testing. [8] [9] In 2003, with the aid of a team of court-appointed lawyers (including Christina Swarns, [10] later to become Executive Director of the national Innocence Project [11] ), a third round of DNA testing (following prior inconclusive efforts) proved that two unidentified men, not Yarris, had committed the crime. [12] [13] In January 2004, after clearing the escape-related charges, he was released. [1]
Following his exoneration and release, Yarris protested once a week outside the District Attorney's Office, demanding that the DNA samples be submitted to the FBI database to find Craig's real rapists and killers. [14] Yarris sued the Delaware County District Attorney's Office in federal court for malicious prosecution, and the case eventually settled for $4 million in 2008. [15] [16]
In 2005, Yarris moved to the UK, where he worked with Reprieve, married and had a daughter. [16] (He had eventually divorced the prison visitor-volunteer who married him while he was incarcerated. [9] ) Following a second divorce, he married his third wife, also from the UK. [17] The couple then moved back to the United States. Following another divorce, Yarris returned to the UK and married for a fourth time, moving from Somerset to Oregon. [18] The couple separated in February 2021.
Yarris is the author of the death row memoir Seven Days to Live (2008) (later reissued as The Fear of 13). [19] [20] He has also self-published books titled The Kindness Approach (2017), [21] My Journey Through Her Eyes (2017), Monsters and Madmen (2018) (experiences on death row at the since-decommissioned SCI Pittsburgh), and Mind Your Heart, Nick Yarris (2024) (a memoir of the 20 years since his exoneration). [22]
Yarris is one of the exonerees profiled in the award-winning documentary, After Innocence (2005). [23] He is also the subject and protagonist-narrator of David Sington's documentary The Fear of 13 released in 2015. [2] [24] [25] Another documentary, featuring Yarris and two other exonerees, titled Life After Death, directed by Lior Geller, was in post-production as of 2024. [26] Yarris appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience on September 11, 2018, talking at length about his life story. [27] The Yarris case was explored in a two-part interview for the December 11, 2019 episode (Season 9) of the podcast, Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom , [28] and was the subject of the June 17, 2019 episode of CNN/HLN's Death Row Stories, "A Prison of His Own" (Season 4, Episode 3). [29] An extended interview, edited to highlight Yarris's talent as a first-person storyteller, appeared in February 2023 on filmmaker and photographer Mark Laita's widely-watched YouTube channel, Soft White Underbelly. [30] A stage play based on the Sington documentary, written by Lindsey Ferrentino and starring Adrien Brody as Yarris, opened in October 2024 at the Donmar Warehouse in London. [31] [32]
Innocence Project, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal organization that works to exonerate the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and other forms of post-conviction relief, as well as advocate for criminal justice reform to prevent future injustice. The group cites various studies estimating that in the United States between 1% and 10% of all prisoners are innocent. The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld who gained national attention in the mid-1990s as part of the "Dream Team" of lawyers who formed part of the defense in the O. J. Simpson murder case.
A miscarriage of justice occurs when an unfair outcome occurs in a criminal or civil proceeding, such as the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they did not commit. Miscarriages are also known as wrongful convictions. Innocent people have sometimes ended up in prison for years before their conviction has eventually been overturned. They may be exonerated if new evidence comes to light or it is determined that the police or prosecutor committed some kind of misconduct at the original trial. In some jurisdictions this leads to the payment of compensation.
Darryl Hunt was an African-American man from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who, in 1984, was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the rape and the murder of Deborah Sykes, a young white newspaper copy editor. After being convicted in that case, Hunt was tried in 1987 for the 1983 murder of Arthur Wilson, a 57-year-old black man of Winston-Salem. Both convictions were overturned on appeal in 1989. Hunt was tried again in the Wilson case in 1990; he was acquitted by an all-white jury. He was tried again on the Sykes charges in 1991; he was convicted.
Kirk Noble Bloodsworth is a former Maryland waterman and the first American sentenced to death to be exonerated post-conviction by DNA testing.
After Innocence is a 2005 American documentary film about men who were exonerated from death row by DNA evidence. Directed by Jessica Sanders, the film won the Special Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.
Kerry Max Cook is an American former death row inmate who was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death for the rape and murder of 21-year-old Linda Jo Edwards in 1977. On June 19, 2024, the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals determined that he was actually innocent, citing a litany of prosecutorial misconduct and errors.
Wrongful execution is a miscarriage of justice occurring when an innocent person is put to death by capital punishment. Opponents of capital punishment often cite cases of wrongful execution as arguments, while proponents argue that innocence concerns the credibility of the justice system as a whole and does not solely undermine the use of the death penalty.
The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town is a 2006 true crime book by John Grisham, his only nonfiction title as of 2020. The book tells the story of Ronald 'Ron' Keith Williamson of Ada, Oklahoma, a former minor league baseball player who was wrongly convicted in 1988 of the rape and murder of Debra Sue Carter in Ada and was sentenced to death. After serving 11 years on death row, he was exonerated by DNA evidence and other material introduced by the Innocence Project and was released in 1999.
Exoneration occurs when the conviction for a crime is reversed, either through demonstration of innocence, a flaw in the conviction, or otherwise. Attempts to exonerate individuals are particularly controversial in death penalty cases, especially where new evidence is put forth after the execution has taken place. The transitive verb, "to exonerate" can also mean to informally absolve one from blame.
The Exonerated is a made-for-cable television film that dramatizes the stories of six people, some of whom, were wrongfully convicted of murder and other offenses, placed on death row, and later exonerated and freed after serving varying years in prison. It was based on a successful stage play of the same name written by Erik Jensen and Jessica Blank and first aired on the former CourtTV cable television network on January 27, 2005. It is directed by Bob Balaban and was produced by Radical Media.
The Georgia Innocence Project is a non-profit corporation based in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Its mission "is to free the wrongly prosecuted through DNA testing, to advance practices that minimize the chances that others suffer the same fate, to educate the public that wrongful convictions are not rare or isolated events, and to help the exonerated rebuild their lives."
Richard Alexander is an Indiana man who was wrongfully convicted of rape and later exonerated by DNA evidence. Years later, on September 17, 2020, Alexander was charged with the murder of Catherine Minix, who was found stabbed to death. Minix had previously filed a protective order against Alexander for domestic violence.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
Jason Flom is an American music industry executive, podcaster and philanthropist. He is the founder of Lava Records, and was previously the chairman of Atlantic Records and Virgin Records/Capitol Music Group. He is also an advocate for those who have allegedly been wrongfully convicted.
Earl Washington Jr. is a former Virginia death-row inmate, who was fully exonerated of murder charges against him in 2000. He had been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in 1984 for the 1982 rape and murder of Rebecca Lyn Williams in Culpeper, Virginia. Washington has an IQ estimated at 69, which classifies him as intellectually disabled. He was coerced into confessing to the crime when arrested on an unrelated charge a year later. He narrowly escaped being executed in 1985 and 1994.
Clarence Arnold Elkins Sr. is an American man who was wrongfully convicted of the 1998 rape and murder of his mother-in-law, Judith Johnson, and the rape and assault of his wife's niece, Brooke Sutton. He was convicted solely on the basis of the testimony of his wife's six-year-old niece who testified that Elkins was the perpetrator.
The Fear of 13 is a 2015 British documentary film by David Sington. It tells the story of the American, Nick Yarris, who was convicted and sentenced to capital punishment for a 1981 kidnapping, rape and murder, and spent 22 years on death row in Pennsylvania. Yarris was released in 2004 when DNA evidence established his innocence. A stage play based on the documentary, written by Lindsey Ferrentino and starring Adrien Brody as Yarris, debuts October 4, 2024, at the Donmar Warehouse in London.
Henry Lee McCollum and Leon Brown are two African American men who were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death for a murder they did not commit.
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