A daughter’s birth. Two grandmothers’ deaths. A master’s degree.
These are but a few things which Sherrill Roland missed out on while he sat in prison for 10 months and two weeks contemplating how he arrived there. In your mind, you might figure that there is nothing to comprehend after reading that he served time in a Washington, D.C., prison. He did the crime, and thus must do the time.
Right?
Well, you would be right in any “normal” case, but not in this particular situation, as Roland was wrongfully imprisoned for crimes that he did not commit. As much as we would like to believe that this is an isolated incident, it is actually much more common than you think and makes me question how important determining guilt — or innocence — is versus collecting a win on behalf of the judicial system.
And yet he was here at NC State.
Roland was at Talley Student Union on March 22 for a presentation of his called “The Jumpsuit Project.” He spoke to a large room of us interested in hearing his story — or “earning extra credit” as he joked.
Roland was literally about to start graduate school at UNC-Greensboro before receiving a fateful call from Washington, D.C., authorities which would change his life forever. He disputed the charges and was told that if he did not show up, then he would be arrested and extradited there upon any contact with local authorities. The District of Columbia was a place that he had not visited in several years but where he had wound up in handcuffs after turning himself in.
At Roland’s hearing, he was charged with a publicly unknown felony, which was later reduced to four misdemeanors. Roland is not very prone to talking about it and the closest that he ever got to describing it was to say that it was “nonviolent” and stemmed from a lie. Whatever the case, the judge sentenced him to the maximum of 13 months in prison.
It was there that he sat until evidence emerged absolving him of the crimes which he had allegedly committed. The same judge that sentenced Roland had his charges dropped and him released from confinement. Everything stemming from the case had also been expunged from his record and sealed at his request.
So here he was in front of us.
A survivor of a system which had been so sure that he was guilty and was willing to show absolute totality in its judgment. A survivor of a penitentiary which has been described as a catastrophe in regards to human rights. A survivor of the “American justice” that we tout to the world.
Is it justice though? Back in 2015, The Washington Post stated that the National Registry of Exonerations revealed that wrongfully imprisoned citizens were subjugated to an average of more than nine years per sentence before being released. Three people convicted of murder were even liberated after 39 years when it was determined that they were innocent.
What is even more disturbing is the disproportionate number of African-Americans who are convicted and then later revealed to be vindicated of any crime they were accused of committing. According to the University of Michigan Law School, African-Americans make up an astounding 47 percent of the 1,900 exonerations as of 2016.
How does this happen? How does our country ruin people’s lives by failing to do its due diligence?
Do not misunderstand me. You will not ever see me give a second thought to the actual menaces to society. However, it does bother me that an innocent American citizen was subjected to a gross oversight on behalf of the legal system.
In fact, I would even say that it even makes me downright mad in the wake of the Stephon Clark shooting. Another person taken down by a system which promises due diligence when and if convenient I suppose. Especially as domestic terrorists such as Dylann Roof, Nikolas Cruz and even James Holmes were able to make it to their day in court.
Hearing Sherrill Roland speak about his experiences so close to this most recent shooting really hit home due to me being — you guessed it — a black man.
Maybe you will understand or maybe you will not. Maybe you will care or maybe you will not. I cannot be, and probably will not be, the one to change your mind on this issue regardless of your stance on this. I just know that it worries me as a person in his twenties hoping to live a long, prosperous life yet consistently concerned that I will be cheated out of that somehow.
I cannot blame you if you do not see what I see. I would definitely like you to, if possible, but it just might be that your perception of things is based around an experience that differs substantially from mine, Roland’s, or even that of the late Mr. Clark. As someone who is 6 feet 4 inches tall though, sometimes this system has never made me feel smaller.
