If Freed After Decades in Jail, How Would You Feel?

[PeterRS]

Two court judgements today have hit the headlines, one in the USA and one in the UK.

The one which will be most talked about is the resentencing of the Lyle Brothers in the USA. In 1989 they were convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possiblity of parole for the brutal murder of their parents. They had basically alleged they snapped one evening and could take no more of the regular sexual molestation by their father. A judge has resentenced the pair to 50 years in prison but now with the possibility of parole. The brothers have admitted to the murder. Relatives say the brothers have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation and have undertaken and paid for a variety of major improvements for prisoners, adding that the severity of the sentence should be revisited because of an evolving understanding of childhood sexual abuse. 

A cousin, Diane Hernandez, testified that she lived with the Menendez family in their Beverly Hills home and viewed herself as an older sister to the boys. On the stand, she described how their father Jose Menendez intimidated and terrorized the house, and testified about his “hallway rule” that when he was with the brothers, no one else could be. A parole board hearing is scheduled for June 13. If approved, the result must then go to the State Governor who has the right to accept or reject it.

The one that will go unnoticed by most is that of Peter Sullivan in the UK whose life sentence has just been quashed on DNA evidence proving he could not have been guilty. He has been in jail for 38 years for the horrific murder of a 21 year old florist. Now 68, his life has been wrongly cut short by virtually half a lifetime. Remarkably he has said to the media, "I am not angry, I am not bitter. I am simply anxious to return to my loved ones and family as I’ve got to make the most of what is left of the existence I am granted in this world.”

We have heard in the past about prison releases due to wrongful convictions, tainted evidence etc. The first that come to mind are the Central Park Five in the New York, two of whom had been aged only 14 and 16 at the time of the crime - although their sentences were for little more than a decade. In the UK four men were given life sentences for a pub bombing which resulted in several deaths in 1975, later confirmed to be as a result of confessions under torture and massively tainted police evidence. One died in prison. the others were freed and exonerated after 15 years in jail. 

But I sometimes wonder how I would feel if, like Peter Sullivan, I had had to spend 38 years in jail on the basis of a wrongful conviction. Would I not be so eaten up by anger and bitterness that I might have become the person the system thought it was sentencing? How could I seriously start to enjoy life knowing that all my most productive years had been taken away from me with perhaps only 10-15 years of life left? How do you while away 38 years productively? The thought horrifies me.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/13/us/menendez-brothers-resentencing-hearing

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/may/13/peter-sullivan-jail-murder-conviction-quashed-diane-sindall

[vinapu]

6 minutes ago, PeterRS said:

 

But I sometimes wonder how I would feel if, like Peter Sullivan, I had had to spend 38 years in jail on the basis of a wrongful conviction. Would I not be so eaten up by anger and bitterness that I might have become the person the system thought it was sentencing? How could I seriously start to enjoy life knowing that all my most productive years had been taken away from me with perhaps only 10-15 years of life left? How do you while away 38 years productively?

I have good news for you , you don't know and you never will with zero chance of spending 38 behind bars.

None of us will know unless placed in the same situation . Guess is some would be bitter till end , others may look , like Peter , for those years to be made as nice as they can be. Still others , not being able to adapt to completely different world, may  even  long to return to what is familiar.

Stories like that unfortunately are repeated world over and are main argument against death penalty . 

[PeterRS]

1 hour ago, vinapu said:

I have good news for you , you don't know and you never will with zero chance of spending 38 behind bars.

I have a fertile and quite active imagination, unfortunately LOL

[floridarob]

2 hours ago, PeterRS said:

the Lyle Brothers

First, from the Title of the post, I thought it was going to be one of @Olddaddy wonderings....

I've never heard them called the Lyle brothers, just the Menendez Brothers....🤔

[PeterRS]

2 minutes ago, floridarob said:

I've never heard them called the Lyle brothers, just the Menendez Brothers....🤔

Apologies. I must have been in one of @Olddaddy's trains of thought!

[vinapu]

11 hours ago, PeterRS said:

I have a fertile and quite active imagination, unfortunately LOL

patented 'vinapu cocktail " which is made of 60% of gin and 40% of gin should help to mitigate 

[unicorn]

Those are two essentially opposite cases. In the case of the Menendez brothers, there's no question but that they committed cold-blooded and brutal murders--and had the stupidity of going on a spending spree afterward. That being said, they were extremely young at the time, and could have been rehabilitated after over 35 years behind bars. If they get paroled, they should feel relieved and grateful. And the law should keep a close eye on them. 

I know I probably don't speak for most people, but if I personally were to be falsely convicted of a crime and faced the prospect of decades behind bars, I would simply arrange my death. I'd just stop eating if there were no easier way to end my life. I don't know what the laws are in the UK regarding restitution after a false conviction. This varies quite a bit from state to state in the US. I would think that $100,000 per year spent behind bars would be appropriate. 

[PeterRS]

4 hours ago, unicorn said:

I don't know what the laws are in the UK regarding restitution after a false conviction. This varies quite a bit from state to state in the US. I would think that $100,000 per year spent behind bars would be appropriate. 

I find the concept of restitution a total cop out. Nothing can restore what has been unlawfully taken away. Daily life is not something that can be bought. Seeing the sunrise, the first sip of the morning's brewed coffee, getting the kids ready for school, hearing the birds sing and the swish of the trees, setting off for work, the joys of a family holiday and Christmas, a child's wedding, the first grandchild . . . how do you compensate for missing that year in year out? A few million $$ may help to buy a nice home and take nice holidays and so on. But how does it help anyone adjust to a society and even more importantly mix in with that society that has moved on 38 years since you last tasted freedom? Does it in any way help you face the minefields of the ordinary day-to-day discourse of life in 2025 when the last you remember is life in 1987? Does living in a lovely apartment or house with gardens take away the remembrance of all those years and the clang of the cell doors of your tiny cage?

Easy questions - and I just have no answer. I cannot understand how a mega-dollop of cash can compensate.

[PeterRS]

9 hours ago, vinapu said:

patented 'vinapu cocktail " which is made of 60% of gin and 40% of gin should help to mitigate 

Oh dear, I am just not a gin drinker! On the other hand, if you made it with Belvedere Polish vodka and a dash of ginger or lime, I'd join you next time you're in Bangkok - as I assume you'l be paying. 🤣🤣🤣

[unicorn]

3 hours ago, PeterRS said:

I find the concept of restitution a total cop out. Nothing can restore what has been unlawfully taken away. Daily life is not something that can be bought...

Obviously it's true that one's youth is lost for good. I don't mean to imply that one can restore the lost years. However, in the case of the Sullivan man who was unjustly incarcerated for 38 years, $3.8 million can provide for a comfortable life for whatever's left. Even in a very expensive city like Los Angeles, one can get a decent house for $1.8 million, and live comfortably off the interest of the remaining $2million. 

[PeterRS]

28 minutes ago, unicorn said:

Obviously it's true that one's youth is lost for good. I don't mean to imply that one can restore the lost years. However, in the case of the Sullivan man who was unjustly incarcerated for 38 years, $3.8 million can provide for a comfortable life for whatever's left. Even in a very expensive city like Los Angeles, one can get a decent house for $1.8 million, and live comfortably off the interest of the remaining $2million. 

I fully accept your point. My point was much more mundane. In 1986 and 1987, the years prior to this poor man's incarceration, the Mir Space station had just been launched, Pixar had just been invented, the Space Shuttle Challenger expoded, the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded, the Big Mac was introduced, The Phantom of the Opera opened in London, the British car Ferry The Herald of Free Enterpise sank in 90 seconds killing 193, first-ever RugbyWorld Cup was held, Agreement between Britain and France to build the Channel Tunnel signed, Black Monday when the DJ ndex lost 508 points etc.

These are all happenings which may still be in the memory of Mr. Sullivan. We have no idea how much he read the newspapers or whether he watched tlevision news, but out of prison he can talk to no-one basically about what happened outside for the last 38 years. Does he know about buying in supermarkets, riding in buses, smartphones, tablets, laptop computers, ATM machines, computer banking - in other words all the things we take for granted if only because we have been living normal lives. How active is his brain? Does he know how to integrate socially? For more than half his life he has virtually only been talking with prisoners and guards. Feeling confortable talking with other people is not something that just happens! In other words, how is he going to fit into this new world socially - not economically.

[unicorn]

No doubt, Mr. Sullivan's case is tragic (and there are plenty of wrongfully convicted people everywhere--not all can prove their innocence, which is very difficult). The lost time is forever lost, tantamount to being murdered. One can only hope that the government will at least make financial amends. I was reading up on it, and it seems that there are states which don't! It looks as though the most he could get in the UK is a million pounds. Not much for all of that suffering. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscarriage_of_justice#Consequences

"...In the United Kingdom a jailed person, whose conviction is quashed, might be paid compensation for the time they were incarcerated. This is currently limited by statute to a maximum sum of £1,000,000 for those who have been incarcerated for more than ten years and £500,000 for any other cases...".

"...At least 21 states in the U.S. do not offer compensation for wrongful imprisonment...".

[unicorn]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glynn_Simmons

"Glynn Ray Simmons is an American man who was wrongfully convicted in the U.S. state of Oklahoma in 1975 of the 1974 murder of Carolyn Sue Rogers.[1] After having been exonerated, he was released from prison in 2023 at the age of 70, after having been imprisoned for 48 years... On August 13, 2024, Simmons was awarded $7,000,000 for wrongful conviction compensation."

"...On February 8, 1975, following the lineups, police arrested Simmons and Roberts, and they were charged with capital murder. However, Simmons testified that on December 30, 1974, he was in Harvey, Louisiana and spent the day playing pool with friends. His alibi was confirmed by four witnesses.

Nevertheless, on June 5, 1975, Simmons and Roberts were convicted of capital murder. In July 1975, they were both sentenced to death. Since in 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional, the Oklahoma Supreme Court decided in 1976 that all death sentences prior to July 24, 1976 should be commuted to life imprisonment without parole.

In 1995, Robert Mildfelt, the trial prosecutor, wrote a letter to Simmons saying that the only witness [Brown] who identified him had wanted to think about the identification “overnight.” He wrote that Brown had described Simmons as more than six feet tall and over 200 pounds, “a physical description greatly different from Mr. Simmons [sic] stature at the time...".

[PeterRS]

All the above assumes that the release of a wrongly accused person will result in his having the rest of his life to enjoy new found riches. The effect of wrong incarceration may not give the released that chance. In 1976 in the UK, 23-year old Stefan Kiszcko, a young man of Ukrainian heritage discovered to have a mental age of 12, was sentenced to life in prison for sexual assault and the murder of a young woman. His conviction partly hinged on three 13-year old girls having accused him of indecent exposure days earlier. One of the girls had told a major newspaper that Kiszco was "a monster". The police had advised him he could "go home" if he confessed. The confession was later retracted. It was only a result of his mother's continued persistence in pursuing her son's innocence that irregularities in the actions of both the police and her son's defence team resulted in the sentence being quashed.

He was finally released 16 years later in 1992 after he was found to be infertile whereas sperm had been found in the victim. The girls then withdrew their allegations, stating they had only made the accusation "for a laugh". The real culprit was eventually found and jailed. In the meantime, Kiszco, emotionally and mentally broken, suffered a massive heart attack and died after just one year of liberty. His ordeal was described by one member of parliament as "the worst miscarriage of justice of all time." Neither he nor his mother received the full £500,000 he had been promised.

There was an interesting programme on UK television more than a year ago. It was an experiment to try to find out what goes on as a jury deliberates. Following a mock trial, with cameras following their deliberations both juries eventually delivered a verdict. The result - one of "guilty" and the other of "not guilty"! Which in my view helps to prove that trial by a jury of one's peers is not the ideal way of procuring justice.