Twinkle Twinkle Little Star...

 Last night on the news program the story about an inmate was shared. A man who has been falsely imprisoned for twenty years and whose case has just recently been overturned with the help of the Innocence Project and others.  He stated that the first thing he was waiting to do this week when he left the prison is look up and see the stars.  He hasn’t been able to see any stars for twenty years.

Twenty years on a charge of rape that had no physical evidence to back it up. The individual had a witness able to testify that he was somewhere else and the individual had passed his lie detector evaluation with flying colors. Twenty years lost even after the initial investigating detective had cleared him as a suspect. Two years later however a new investigating detective took over the cold case and decided to go after this man.   The previous official departmental findings (or lack of) were never shared with the defense team and the detective hung the entire case on a witness picking the gentleman’s picture out of a picture line up two years after the fact.

I don’t want to think the shutter that goes through those that have studied brain research and the field of perception and memory.  Besides these were really bad photographs and only one showed a suspect with a larger head and with a total different background than all the others.   I bet I don’t have to tell you which one picture the witnesses pointed at.   And which picture was the suspect.

During the initial trial at some point the individual was offered a plea bargain to plead guilty and accept a sentence of 30 days. He refused because he said he could not plead guilty to something he had not done. He sat in prison and watched other inmates with actual torturous crimes to their credit go before the patrol board and get cut loose early because they would fess up and agree to demonstrate remorse for their crimes. But when he continued to be steadfast and unremorseful for a crime that he did not commit he never was considered for parole.   He has been twenty years of being somewhere and engaged with a life that he had never imagined would have been his. Now he gets a chance to take control back for his life.

The individual’s most emotional moments of the interview were focused on appreciating the soldiers that are fighting for freedom.   I think those words may have covered both those individual "soldiers" that fought for him through the justice system and those that fought for our way of life in the greater world such that our justice system could work.   Even if it takes twenty years…

I am now thinking of the recent bill before the US Congress that would take away those basic rights granted in our system to hear evidence against any of us as American citizens. Those that read the fine print tell us it is “only” in special cases involved with suspected terrorist activities by American citizens.   Does make you ponder the wisdom of and the checks and balances that might need to exist on those powerful enough to get to make those decisions.

And the stars come out even when we forget to watch and even when we are not patient enough to be present.

But I will go back to the wonders of individual freedom and the opportunity to take control of one’s life and back to the idea of responsibility for the outcome of personal choice.  I am thinking that I am not going to complain to myself about the weightiness of responsibilities in my own life.    Again perspective and the changed “vision” of the world around us keep us in awe. I hope I have been worthy of my last twenty years and look forward to exploring what can be achieved and experienced in the next twenty.

We already appreciated contemplating our universe but now we will remember that the stars are not available to every one all the time. Enjoy all moments of wonder.