PHILADELPHIA — The television crew had him up at dawn doing the Rocky
fandango, dashing up the 72 stone steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and
dancing around in triumph like another over-the-hill, underdog pugilist who had
made it big.
Cliché or not, it is hard not to imagine the familiar trumpet score along with
the thwock, thwock, thwock of fists on punching bags as Dewey Bozella trains for
one of the least likely boxing matches in history.
After 26 years in New York State prisons, and two years after he was exonerated
of murder, Mr. Bozella will make his professional boxing debut on Saturday in
Los Angeles, at age 52, on the undercard of the light-heavyweight champion
Bernard Hopkins. (A mere 46 himself, Mr. Hopkins became the oldest fighter to
win a major world championship this May.)
Mr. Bozella’s other fight, in which he is seeking compensation for the half of
his life he spent behind bars, may be even more daunting than chasing victory in
the ring. But for now, Mr. Bozella is focused on what he says will be his one
and only professional bout.
“I want to go out there and give 100 percent and then move on with my life,” he
said. “This is not a career move. It’s a personal move and a way to let people
know to never give up on their dreams. My favorite quote is ‘Don’t let fear
determine who you are and never let where you come from determine where you’re
going.’ That’s what this is about.”
The product of a violent broken family and a hard life on the streets, Mr.
Bozella was a troubled 18-year-old in 1977 when Emma Crapser, 92, was murdered
in her Poughkeepsie, N.Y., home after returning from playing bingo. Six years
later, based almost entirely on the testimony of two criminals who repeatedly
changed their stories, he was convicted of the murder.
There was no physical evidence implicating Mr. Bozella. Instead, there was the
fingerprint of another man, Donald Wise, who was later convicted of committing a
nearly identical murder of another elderly woman in the same neighborhood. Mr.
Bozella was retried in 1990, and was offered a deal that would let him go free
in exchange for an admission that he committed the crime. He refused. A jury
convicted him again.
At Sing Sing, he earned a bachelor’s degree from Mercy College and a master’s
from the New York Theological Seminary. And he boxed in the prison’s “Death
House,” once the scene of electrocutions, then a boxing ring, where he became
Sing Sing’s light-heavyweight champion. At parole hearings, he repeatedly
refused to express remorse for the crime he did not commit. He would get out one
way, he said, either in a box or as an exonerated man. The box seemed more
likely.
In the end, he was saved by a miracle. The Innocence Project, a legal clinic
dedicated to overturning wrongful convictions, believing in his case but unable
to pursue it absent DNA evidence, referred it to the law firm WilmerHale.
Lawyers there eventually found the Poughkeepsie police lieutenant who had
investigated the case. He had retired, and Mr. Bozella’s was the only file he
had saved. It included numerous pieces of evidence favorable to Mr. Bozella that
had not been turned over to his lawyers. On Oct. 28, 2009, he walked out of the
courthouse in Poughkeepsie finally a free man.
He struggled to find work, eventually counseling former convicts while teaching
boxing at a Newburgh, N.Y., gym until ESPN became interested in his story. In
July, at its annual ESPY Awards, he was given its Arthur Ashe Courage Award,
whose past recipients have included Muhammad Ali, Pat Tillman and Nelson
Mandela. The offer to box professionally came as a result of that appearance.
But when he took the rigorous California State Athletic Commission test on Aug.
24 to get licensed to box in the state, he failed. After Labor Day, he began
working out in Philadelphia with the trainers for Mr. Hopkins. They were
skeptical.
“I’m thinking, ‘I’m going to kill this old guy,’ ” said Danny Davis, one of Mr.
Hopkins’s trainers. “There’s no way this guy can make it through my training.”
But Mr. Bozella got tougher, leaner and more nimble, dropping 10 pounds in
little more than a week. He sparred with, and took serious lumps from, a
world-class fighter: Lajuan Simon, a middleweight title contender. Mr. Bozella
took the test again on Sept. 29. This time he passed.
Officials said Mr. Bozella was believed to be the oldest fighter ever licensed
to box in California. Fighters that age are extremely rare but hardly unknown.
“The Ultimate Book of Boxing Lists,” by Bert Randolph Sugar and Teddy Atlas, has
a section on “Boxing’s Greatest Methuselahs” that includes Mr. Hopkins; Jem
Mace, the legendary 19th-century English boxer who fought at 59; and Saoul
Mamby, a former junior welterweight titleholder who fought in 2008 at the age of
60, making him the oldest fighter ever to appear in an officially sanctioned
bout.
Mr. Bozella, a cruiserweight — between light-heavyweights and heavyweights —
will not be fighting for a championship; he is taking on Larry Hopkins, 30, of
Houston, who is 0-3 as a professional (and is not related to Bernard Hopkins).
His purse in the pay-per-view bout will be in the very low four figures.
But even if hype and marketing are as much a part of boxing as quick feet and
sharp jabs, Mr. Bozella said the bout was anything but a stunt.
“You’ve seen the workout I went through, the pain, blood and bruises I’m
getting,” he said after four rounds sparring with Mr. Simon last week. “No one’s
giving me nothing for free. I can go out there and get knocked out, or I can
knock the other guy out. It’s that simple.”
Mr. Bozella hopes to open his own gym as a way to mentor youngsters, but beyond
its Hollywood touches, his feel-good story turns cloudier. The day after he
passed the boxing test, a federal judge threw out his lawsuit against Dutchess
County and the City of Poughkeepsie over the evidence that was not turned over
to his lawyers.
The decision was primarily based on a controversial Supreme Court ruling in the
case of Connick v. Thompson. By a 5-to-4 margin, the court, in a decision
written by Justice Clarence Thomas in March, threw out a $14 million jury award
to a former death row inmate freed after prosecutorial misconduct came to light.
The decision stated that only a pattern of misconduct in properly turning over
evidence could warrant financial compensation, no matter how egregious the
misconduct against a single defendant.
“I’m not going to disrespect the courts,” Mr. Bozella said. “I’d just like the
justice system to be fair. Same thing with boxing. If the judges are fair, then
the real winner wins. Just be fair. That’s it.”
This year,
the United States will release nearly three-quarters of a million people from
prison, a record high. Nationally, 2.3 million people are in prison in the
United States, and 95 percent of them will, at some point, get out and go home.
Society has a strong interest in keeping them home — in helping them to become
law-abiding citizens instead of falling back into their old ways and returning
to prison. But American programs for newly released prisoners echo the typical
follies of our criminal justice system: our politicians usually believe that
voters only want the emotional satisfactions of meting out maximum punishment,
even if these policies lead to even more crime.
The usual package granted to someone released from prison in New York state is
$40, a bus ticket and the considerable stigma that follows an ex-offender. Since
prisoners are often held far away from their families and states charge
astronomical rates for prison phone calls, prisoners often lose touch with their
loved ones and may not have anyone to take them in when they get home. They may
arrive in their home cities with no plans, other than — worrisomely — those
hatched with fellow prisoners. They have little prospect for jobs or housing.
Since many don’t get effective drug treatment in prison, they might still crave
a fix, which costs money. It is little wonder that some former prisoners fall
back into crime within hours or days.
Returning prisoners need many things: stable housing, drug treatment, job
training, G.E.D. (high school equivalency) classes, parenting lessons, anger
management. But even the handful of people who do worry about ex-offenders
rarely mention what may be the most crucial need of all: a better class of
friends.
Former prisoners go back to their old neighborhoods and meet up with their old
gang, or new people of the only type they may be comfortable with — criminals.
But what people need is to stop hanging out with associates who tempt them with
promises of easy money or drug-filled nights. They need to start hanging out
with people who think about the consequences of their actions, who value
legitimate jobs, sobriety and family — people who go to their A.A. meetings and
G.E.D. classes, who are trying to rebuild their lives.
How important are the right friends? We know that people get into crime and
gangs primarily because their friends do. Hanging around with delinquent friends
encourages young people to think of themselves as delinquents, and puts them in
a world where criminal behavior is easy to engage in and brings social rewards.
We do not know as much about whether pro-social peer groups can turn people away
from crime. But it is reasonable to believe that the right peer group can help.
In West Harlem there is a large and beautiful Gothic building overlooking the
Hudson River. It is called the Fortune Academy, but it is known to all as the
Castle. It is owned by the Fortune Society, a group dedicated to helping
returning prisoners succeed with starting new lives. The Fortune Society helps
about 4,000 newly released prisoners each year with job training and placement,
drug treatment, classes in cooking and anger management and being a father, and
G.E.D. studies.
Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times The Fortune Academy in West Harlem.
Most of the people who work at Fortune were once themselves drug addicted,
homeless or imprisoned. This is important. “The clients can look at the staff
and say, ‘a few years ago, that person was where I am,’” said Glenn E. Martin,
Fortune’s vice president of development and public affairs. (He himself served
six years in prison, and was released nine years ago.) The staff can also see
past appearances: “Some others may see a guy with his pants pulled down and his
hat on, yelling, and say ‘he’s not ready,’ ” said Martin. “But we’ll talk to
him.” The credibility and understanding produced by having a staff of former
offenders is important. But about 300 of Fortune’s clients each year get
something more: a bed in the Castle, and the chance to start a law-abiding life
in the company of other people trying to do the same.
The Castle provides solutions to several of the most important problems facing
newly released prisoners. One is housing. Between 10 and 20 percent of people
released from state and city prisons and jails have nowhere stable to go — they
couch surf with friends or go into homeless shelters. But a stable home is a
prerequisite for all the other things needed for a productive life. The Castle
can be that home for a few nights or many months, until the person can find work
and safe housing he or she can afford.
Anyone newly released from prison with nowhere else to go can apply to live in
the Castle. Open beds are filled by the first qualified applicant, but the
Castle turns away at least 10 people for every one it accepts. Prisoners
throughout New York state apply — because the Fortune Society has physical
offices in some jails and prisons, the parole bureaucracy refers them and
because prisoners themselves spread the word. “We get several thousand letters a
year,” says JoAnne Page, the president and chief executive of the Fortune
Society. “We get referrals from people’s mothers.” The Castle has single rooms
for residents who earn them; the rest have roommates. It serves meals and has
staff on duty around the clock. It has a computer lab, laundry and a cafeteria.
Residents are required to go full time to counseling, services such as drug
treatment or job placement, or to school.
But perhaps more important than housing, the Castle gives people a new group of
friends to identify with. Every Thursday night at 6 the Castle has a group
meeting of all its residents. At one recent meeting, people sat around an
enormous table and talked about the successes of their week. One woman talked
about her job as a janitor at a shelter for women. “It’s a safe place, and clean
— that’s because of me,” she said with pride. One man recounted a speech he
attended by a political candidate. Another said he opened a bank account for the
first time in his life. One woman was applying for jobs and wondered aloud how
best to phrase the information that she was a felon. JoAnne Page took the
opportunity to deliver one of Fortune Society’s key messages: You are not a
felon. You committed a felony and did your time, but that is not who you are.
One man announced that the Castle’s chorus was rehearsing and was open to new
members. The residents applauded each other fervently.
Delancey Street, in San Francisco, is a very different community with the same
purpose. People come to live at the Delancey Street residential building for an
average of four years. Each resident is required to get at least a high school
equivalency degree and learn several marketable job skills, such as furniture
making, sales or accounting. The organization is completely run by its
residents, who teach each other — there is no paid staff at all. Teaching others
is part of the rehabilitation process for Delancey residents. The residence is
financed in part by private donations, but the majority of its financing comes
from the businesses the residents run, such as restaurants, event planning, a
corporate car service, a moving company and framing shop. All money earned goes
to the collective, which pays all its residents’ expenses.
At both Fortune and Delancey, a person emerging from prison is surrounded by a
community of people who support him, hold him accountable, teach him skills and
model good behavior. Many of the men and women in these programs come to think
of themselves as productive members of society for the first time in their
lives, and it may also be the first time they ever feel competent at anything
besides lawbreaking.
The Delancey Street residence, which began in 1971, has never been formally
evaluated. But there is no question that is phenomenally successful. It has
graduated more than 14,000 people from prison into constructive lives. Carol
Kizziah, who manages Delancey’s efforts to apply its lessons elsewhere, says
that the organization estimates that 75 percent of its graduates go on to
productive lives. (For former prisoners who don’t go to Delancey, only 25 to 40
percent avoid re-arrest.) Since it costs taxpayers nothing, from a government’s
point of view it could very well be the most cost-effective social program ever
devised. The program has established similar Delancey Street communities in Los
Angeles, New Mexico, North Carolina and upstate New York. Outsiders have
replicated the Delancey Street model in about five other places.
While some
other Fortune Society programs have been researched and found to be effective,
there has been no study of the Castle, which began in 2002. Nevertheless, the
Castle is often cited by criminal justice experts as a model for helping
ex-offenders. New York State’s Division of Parole gave a special award to the
Fortune Society last month, and parole officers who work with Castle residents
speak highly of it. “It’s working,” said Otis Cruse, a parole officer who has
had the Castle in his jurisdiction. “It has counseling, groups, connections to
employment – it’s one-stop shopping. It’s comfortable, quiet, clean and safe —
you can sleep without looking over your shoulder. It’s an environment where
positive people are doing positive things — you are colleagues in pursuing the
same goal.”
There is one possible caveat about the Castle’s effectiveness: most of the
people I saw at the Castle were in their 30s or older. Older people who get out
of prison, by definition, are more likely than young ones to have served long
sentences for serious offenses. And the longer the sentence, the more
disconnected and disoriented prisoners are likely to be upon release. So they
are important clients for the Castle. But they are also at an age where people
are leaving crime on their own, finally ready to accept some responsibility and
aware they are not immortal and want a family and a stable life. Crime is a
young person’s game. It may be true that many people at the Castle successfully
turn around their lives. The question is whether their age would help them to do
so in any case.
There are two puzzles here. Delancey Street is now celebrating its 40th
anniversary. One would think that by now there would be Delancey 2.0 models
sprouting all over. But there are not. A related mystery concerns the idea that
underlies both Delancey and the Castle: the importance of pro-social peers. Our
guts tell us they matter; we know the effect our friends can have on our
behavior. Peer pressure may be the single most important factor getting people
into crime — surely it should be employed to get them out again. Yet it is not.
Besides Delancey and the Castle, there is probably not a single government
agency or citizen group working with former prisoners that lists “clean-living
peers” alongside housing, job training and other items on its agenda for what
former prisoners need to go straight. These two communities of former prisoners
are good projects, but they have failed to have a wider impact. Saturday’s
column will look at why this is the case.
DALLAS (AP) — A Dallas man
who spent more than 27 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit was freed
Tuesday, after being incarcerated longer than any other wrongfully convicted
U.S. inmate cleared by DNA testing.
James Lee Woodard stepped
out of the courtroom and raised his arms to a throng of photographers.
Supporters and other people gathered outside the court erupted in applause.
"No words can express what a tragic story yours is," state District Judge Mark
Stoltz told Woodard at a brief hearing before his release.
Woodard, cleared of the 1980 murder of his girlfriend, became the 18th person in
Dallas County to have his conviction cast aside. That's a figure unmatched by
any county nationally, according to the Innocence Project, a New York-based
legal center that specializes in overturning wrongful convictions.
"I thank God for the existence of the Innocence Project," Woodard, 55, told the
court. "Without that, I wouldn't be here today. I would be wasting away in
prison."
Overall, 31 people have been formally exonerated through DNA testing in Texas,
also a national high. That does not include Woodard and at least three others
whose exonerations will not become official until Gov. Rick Perry grants pardons
or the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals formally accepts the ruling of lower
courts that have already recommended exoneration.
Woodard was sentenced to life in prison in July 1981 for the murder of a
21-year-old Dallas woman found raped and strangled near the banks of the Trinity
River.
He was convicted primarily on the basis of testimony from two eyewitnesses, said
Natalie Roetzel, the executive director of the Innocence Project of Texas. One
has since recanted in an affidavit. As for the other, "we don't believe her
testimony was accurate," Roetzel said.
Like nearly all the exonorees, Woodard has maintained his innocence throughout
his time in prison. But after filing six writs with an appeals court, plus two
requests for DNA testing, his pleas of innocence became so repetitive and
routine that "the courthouse doors were eventually closed to him and he was
labeled a writ abuser," Roetzel said.
"On the first day he was arrested, he told the world he was innocent ... and
nobody listened," Jeff Blackburn, chief counsel for the Innocence Project of
Texas, said during Tuesday's hearing.
He even stopped attending his parole hearings because gaining his release would
have meant confessing to a crime he didn't do.
"It says a lot about your character that you were more interested in the truth
than your freedom," the judge told Woodard after making his ruling.
Blackburn and prosecutors hailed Tuesday's hearing as a landmark moment of
frequent adversaries working together.
Since the DNA evidence was tied to rape and Woodard was convicted of murder,
Innocence Project attorneys had to prove that the same person committed both
crimes. They said they couldn't have done that without access to evidence
provided by Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins' office.
"You've got to have very good lawyers with a lot of experience and skill ...
working on both ends of this case, hard," Blackburn said. "And you've also got
to have government power behind what you do."
Under Watkins, Dallas County has a program supervised by the Innocence Project
of Texas that is reviewing hundreds of cases of convicts who have requested DNA
testing to prove their innocence.
While the number of exonerations on Watkins' watch continues to grow, he said
this one was a little different.
"I saw the human side of it, and seeing the human said of it just gives you more
courage to advocate for issues like this," said Watkins, who had breakfast with
Woodard on Tuesday morning. "It gives me that resolve to go even further to find
out who (the killer) is so that we can get him into custody."
Woodard said his family was "small and scattered," although he pointed out a
niece in the courtroom. He said his biggest regret was not being with his mother
when she died.
"I can tell you what I'd like to do first: breathe fresh, free air," Woodard
said during a news conference in the courtroom after the hearing. "I don't know
what to expect. I haven't been in Dallas since buses were blue."
