Awful, Contemptible, Foolhardy Hope

Hope is the best-smelling meal you've ever salivated over, which riddles you with intestinal parasites. Hope is the cutest girl in your third-grade class, approaching you at recess just to kick you in the nuts and run away giggling. Hope is the stingray you mistake for a sand dollar. Hope is the big, frosty orange-sherbet tub in Grandma's freezer, from which you scoop a bowlful and discover, too late, is frozen chicken fat. Hope is the beauty spot on your cheek that metastasizes.

You might've been surprised to read, in my September post about MTV's Unlocking the Truth, that the series had me "excited for the future," since I normally eschew such hopeful abandon. If you later scratched your head at the series finale, aware of what producers cut from the show, you'll understand now why my September enthusiasm turns my stomach.

Hope is the imprisoned innocent's daydream of freedom.

As a recovering pessimist, I nevertheless consider wide-eyed, credulous hope a failure to maintain perspective. My perspective was warped when I unquestioningly believed that, with access to all our information, Unlocking the Truth would at least mention certain witnesses, certain critical points, even if television's strict time constraints prevented lengthy discussion of them. As long as all of the information got out, I'd have been satisfied with whatever interpretation of it the series came to. The narrative only goes one way, so I naively waited, episode after episode, for them to show the rest of the picture.

The night of the finale, credits rolled, a Catfish rerun began, and I sat stock-still on my bunk, in the TV's flickering, trying to work out what I missed. I thought, That can't be it. But, somehow, it was.

Street demonstrations, benefit concerts, candlelight vigils, #FreeByronCase trending on social media, donations piling in to cover my lawyer's fees, mailbags bulging with viewers' expressions of solidarity, flurries of messages to the governor and tweets to @GovJayNixon — none of it happened. But, then, since Unlocking the Truth left out essential facts, and since Ryan Ferguson concluded that the evidence didn't establish guilt or innocence in my case, I was hardly surprised. Impassioned responses don't usually result from a shrug.

Then the election came and went, and I couldn't stop thinking about my pardon application, submitted to Governor Nixon in August of 2011 and still under consideration. Plenty of prisoners and parolees have filed and been denied in the five years since I filed that document and its fat appendix, setting out a pretty solid argument of innocence. The governor's legal advisor, after meeting with my people in 2012, seemed to believe that mine is a wrongful conviction, that I didn't murder Anastasia WitbolsFeugen. He must've told Governor Nixon the same, so why this delay?

Missouri has another highest officeholder now. Is Governor Nixon planning to leave my case untouched, a sticky wicket for his successor, Eric Greitens, to deal with? Or is he going to dignify my plea for freedom with an answer? With less than two months before the powerful Governor Nixon reverts to being plain ol' Jay, every day that passes adds weight to that question.

Since day one (that's 11 June 2001, as anyone paying attention already knows), I've maintained that I had nothing whatsoever to do with Anastasia WitbolsFeugen's death. It was true then, it's true today, and it'll still be true in another fifteen years, whether I'm locked in this box or living a life of rightful freedom. It'll be true no matter what stories Kelly Moffett tells, no matter how many distortions the Antibyron Clique posts online, no matter which of my personality quirks gets mistranslated, no matter who steps out of my undignified past to say what an asshole I was, no matter when (or if) the evidence of my innocence is finally shown to be incontrovertible.

Moreover, I'll keep saying it until the public, the Missouri courts, Governor Nixon, Governor Greitens, or whoever else has power enough to change my circumstances sees my innocence for the absolute truth that it is. That such a day comes is the one and only hope I'm willing to keep close to my heart, without regret, without embarrassment, without reservation, unflaggingly, for as long as it takes.

Show Your Support with a Click: An Update on My Pardon Application Process

The crux of my 2011 “Show Your Support with a Click” post was a plea for Pariah’s Syntax readers to voice their support of my pardon application by following a link to the Free Byron case petition. More than 1,200 have done so, sending the message to Governor Jay Nixon that they are aware of the injustice of my wrongful imprisonment and want me released.

To those who have signed, your support means the world to me. It took courage to overcome the prejudice created by the jury’s verdict, to review the facts on your own, to discover my wrongful conviction and, most courageous of all, speak truth to power by adding your name to (or even signing anonymously) that petition. Really, thank you.

At this point, the Office of the Governor has held my pardon application under consideration for two and a half years. According to the Missouri Board of Probation and Parole, who administer much of the pardon process, most requests for executive clemency (including commutations, reprieves, and pardons alike) are decided within eighteen to twenty-four months. The few applicants I know here were almost all rejected within three or four. What does this delay mean for my chances? No matter the merits of an applicant’s case, asking the governor of any state for a pardon is a long shot, but there are a few factors that help my odds.

• In a meeting with one of Governor Nixon’s legal advisors, it was clear to my representatives that details of my case are well understood by the Governor’s staff. There being no “smoking gun” involved, my case takes this kind of close attention to comprehend. The deeper you look into it, the more the arguments for my guilt fall apart. In short, knowing the details as they do, they ought to be convinced of my innocence.
• I’m a model prisoner. In this violent maximum-security facility where I’ve lost the past twelve years, I’ve only ever received two conduct violations. One was for having a pen pal ad (if you need an explanation, read this post). The other was for having a contraband sheet of four adhesive Avery file-folder labels in my cell. No fights, no insubordination, and none of the violent behavior someone with the homicidal urges my accusers claim I have should’ve surfaced at least once in all these years.
• I have a lot of support from a group of fantastic people. Friends have sent numerous letters to the Governor, attesting to my character and their willingness to give me all sorts of assistance if I’m released: places to stay, transportation, employment, and so on. My transition back into the world wouldn’t be a burden on society, the way the average prisoner’s would.

Do these points actually mean anything, practically speaking? The decision to pardon or not to pardon is purely a political matter, not a judicial one, so the return of my freedom ultimately depends on what the public seems to think. And who is the public? You are.

I started blogging because a friend convinced me that putting my thoughts out there to be read would help people know me better as a person, not as a case, a caricature, or a cause. Is it working? Am I being understood? The number of readers this blog attracts in a week, versus the number of petition signatures collected, tells me no — that many people can shrug off an innocent man’s life being taken because of his teenage friends’ death pact. Two lives are already lost, they might as well say, so what’s one more? That’s exactly what my sentence of life without parole means: without your help, I’ll die in prison.

But not quickly. In the decades to come, there will be losses to bear as my loved ones fall away. I’ll awaken to this purgatory every morning with the knowledge that a little more time has slipped away, feeling that I’m a half-step closer to the grave myself — an end that I can only hope is sudden, so that I might be spared the physical agony of illness in the fumbling, negligent “care” of prison doctors. I’ve been sentenced to life, but it’s no way to live.

Please go to the Petition Site and sign. Please.