"Emel, you know me and you were friends for a very long time. And that incident that occurred should not break our friendship, the letter said. Emel, don't think for one bit that cause I'm out here I'm not suffering... I don't think I deserve to walk the face of the earth because one of my best friends is locked up, for something that he didn't do."
"I'm sitting here charged with murder, trying to adjust to being in jail, McDowell told CNN this month. I had just spent my first birthday incarcerated. I had spent my first Christmas (incarcerated). My first New Year. And to get this letter it opened a lot of wounds. McDowell believed the letter, hand-written on unlined paper and dated January 1991, would clear his name."
Emel McDowell received a handwritten letter in jail from the man McDowell believed fired the fatal shot at a Brooklyn house party, claiming McDowell was innocent and expressing suffering over McDowell's incarceration. McDowell gave the letter to his court-appointed attorney and trusted it would prove his innocence, but a jury convicted him of murder and weapon possession and sentenced him to 22 years to life. McDowell kept the letter in a Bible and mounted a decades-long effort to clear his name by contacting lawyers, activists, and journalists while taking paralegal classes and earning college credits in prison. Conflicting witness accounts and other evidence failed to overturn the conviction for a long time.
Read at www.cnn.com
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