After Innocence Guided Reflection 

1. In the movie After Innocence, a specific scene that got to me was the one with Nick Yarris talking while in his car. Yarris was one of the exonerees who was wrongfully imprisoned and placed on death row. When Yarris was imprisoned, he was put into one of the worst prisons in america. In this prison Yarris was not allowed to speak for his first two years there, where he was also tortured and placed in solitary confinement. While Yarris is in his car, he says that without an ounce of ego he can say that he is one of the strongest human beings ever created since he has survived that. This scene really intrigues me because it make me think, if I would even able to survive what Yarris has gone through, and if did survive, would I still be as mentally stable as Yarris is.

2. While many things surprised me in the film, such as the government not compensating wrongfully convicted men and the government refusing to clear the records of those they wrongly convicted of a crime. One thing that stood out more than others is the case of Wilton Dedge. Dedge was wrongfully imprisoned and with DNA evidence he would have been proven guilty and freed from prison. However, Dedge’s prosecutor did not care if Dedge was actually guilty or not, he just wanted Dedge in prison. So Dedge’s prosecutor did everything in his power to prevent the use of DNA evidence in his retrial. After 22 years, the use of DNA evidence was finally allowed in Dedge’s trial and he was freed from prison.

3. Questions I still have after viewing After Innocence are, did the exonerees ever get compensated for their wrongful convictions? Or, did they at least get their records cleared so that they are not labeled as criminals for a crime they did not commit? It is not fair that these men had to give up multiple years of their lives’ due to a justice system that failed them. To make matters worst, the government is not making any corrections on their mistake. This also brings up the question of, how many other men are wrongfully in prison for a crime they did not commit, and how many more men would be out of prison if only they had DNA evidence available to them.