Few fates are worse than spending years maybe even decades in prison for a crime which you did not commit. Just imagine your Life being stopped, your freedom is non-existent, family and friends might abandon you and you’re treated as the lowest all though you have no fault on your side. The more fortunate ones eventually get exonerated though many tend to retreat into anonymity once they’re free.
But this was not the case for our guy Jarrett Adams, an innocent man convicted of rape and sentenced to decades in prison, but he not only learned the law to get himself out of prison but also turned that knowledge into successful law career designed to help people in the same situation where he was once.
In 1998, 17-year-old Adams attended a party at the University of Wisconsin and got closely acquainted with one of the women there, three weeks later police showed up at his condo to arrest him for rapping that women. The only problem was everything about their night together was consensual. Naively he thought the truth would be enough to set him free.
But that did not happen, he was sent to Wisconsin for trial and could not afford an attorney, his court-appointed lawyer incompetent and argued that the best defense was incredibly enough no defence, no witness, no argument no nothing the idea that this lawyer claimed was to put the burden of proof on the prosecution, Adams who knew nothing of the legal system outside from what he saw on shows like Law & order went along with it, he figured that since he didn’t do it the courts couldn’t prove anything he hadn’t counted on one factor though “Racism” Adams was black and the jury was white and they didn’t let a little thing like no evidence stop them from convincing him of rape. The judge in lockstep sentenced Adams to 28 years in prison.
Of course, Adams was devastated but he wouldn’t rot in there, His cell-mate who worked at the prison law library knew his mate's conviction was racist and urged him not to give up and to fight for his freedom. Adams quickly agreed and spent most of his time learning everything he could about the law eventually he found a supreme court case that said everybody has the constitutional right to effective counsel, which is something Adams knew he never got during his trial, he then contacted the Wisconsin Innocence Project a non- profit dedicated to fighting for the freedom of the wrongfully convicted.
They took on his case both because it seemed like one they could fight and win but also because Adams seemed to know much about the law as they did, this was no longer the same scared kid who trusted the clean outcomes of a scripted courtroom drama.
Finally, in 2005 the courts agreed that Adams had a bad council and his conviction never should have happened. With he was a free man but also a changed man not content to just disappear with his freedom he wanted to help others who were wasting away in jail for crimes they didn’t do he enrolled in college shortly after being set free a journey that culminated in his graduating law school in 2015, in the summer of 2016 he found himself hired by the most appropriate of companies the innocence project. They helped him to get free and now he would get the chance to work them and help free others like him.
The very next year he scored his first victory a Wisconsin man named Richard Baronet who had been incarcerated since 1990 on a bogus rape conviction, despite having multiple alibis an FBI agent insisted his hair was found at the crime scene which was enough for the jury to convict. Adams in the innocence project using DNA evidence, the FBI’s analysis of the hair was incorrect with that Baronet was a free man for the first time in 27 years the victory doubled as personal vindication for Adams who fought for Baronet’s freedom in the same courtroom that had convicted Adams of rape in 1988.
As he explained, “Nothing pays me back more my family that me walking in the same court in the same state where they didn’t even look at me when they gave me 28 years but now they have to acknowledge me as Attorney Adams”.
Jared Adams is the proof that even if you lose everything through no fault of your own it doesn’t mean the end of the world for you, you can bounce back as he did and not only win your life back but even build a better one than you had before.
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