God bless you, Raymond Towler

Some of you know that I do a little volunteer work at the Ohio Public Defender’s Office. The public defender has something called the Wrongful Conviction Project, where inmates in Ohio’s prisons who feel that they have been convicted for something they didn’t do, fill out a questionnaire, to see if there’s anything that the nice people at the OPD can do to help them out. Often, when I’m volunteering, my son will call me with some dumb “emergency” that he wants me to fix. I am always like, “Dude. I am trying to help these people get an innocent person out of prison. Can’t you call someone else to find out if you should wear shorts or pants tomorrow?”

Anyway, above my little volunteer desk sits a framed poster that says, “The faces of Ohio’s DNA Exonerees.” It has the pictures of about ten men who were convicted of crimes, and later exonerated through DNA testing. It also has the number of years that these men spent in prison before they were proved innocent. The most striking face in the bunch is Raymond Towler, who was in prison for 29 years before DNA testing proved that another man, not he, committed the rape for which he was convicted. Raymond went to prison when he was 24 and was released when he was 54. Click here for an article that tells Raymond’s story. I am warning you: you will cry when you read it.

Twenty-nine years is longer than some of my friends have been alive. I think about all of the things that I did in 29 years, and then think about what would have become of me had I been forced to live every single day of those 29 years in the same way, wearing the same clothes, sleeping in the same bed, eating the same food, worried about my safety and my family and my sanity day after day after day after day. Twenty-nine years is longer than Kurt Cobain, Heath Ledger, James Dean, Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding and Tupac lived. Twenty nine years means Christmases and birthdays and anniversaries when nobody remembers to send you a card. Twenty-nine years for anyone, guilty or innocent, is a long time, but for the innocent, it has got to feel like a Kafka nightmare.

I look up at that poster every time I sit down, and I see Raymond Towler’s face, and under that: 29 years in prison. And I wonder how many people are sitting in prison under the same circumstances, but are unable to access the kind of help and resources that Raymond Towler received. Twenty nine years, for doing absolutely nothing. In prison. Raymond Towler’s mother died while he was in prison. He attended her funeral in shackles. He was innocent.

My point here isn’t to say that every prisoner in Ohio was wrongfully convicted. But I know for a fact that those ten faces that I see on the poster were put in prison solely because they were victims of really bad luck. Bad luck doesn’t choose its victims based on how bad of a person they were, or by measuring the potential of evil in their heart. Bad luck is random and capricious and it could get any of us at any time.

So what I am asking of you is this: take a moment, close your eyes, and send your thoughts of loving kindness to those who struggle in prison. Pray, chant, mumble, visualize, meditate - whatever floats your boat – but please, just take a minute to send your very best energy into their Universe. Not every prisoner is Raymond Towler, but any prisoner could be.