Publisher's Synopsis
"I was so afraid I became braver than I had ever been."
At 21, Herman Atkins was convicted of raping a woman he had never met, in a town he had never visited. Twelve years later, he was set free.
In this gripping memoir, we are plunged into the nightmare of a justice system gone awry. What would you do if you were imprisoned for a crime you didn’t commit? And if you were exonerated at last, how would you measure what you had lost? For Atkins, these were the realities he had to face.
Raised by a police officer, Atkins moves from shock at the failure of institutions he’d trusted, to rage and hopelessness. He spends more than a decade in some of California’s most notorious prisons. He learns the rules of survival in a land of violence, and battles to maintain his strength and spirit.
And then, thanks to new DNA evidence, Atkins is proven innocent . . . and released into a world where he no longer seems to belong. Exoneration is not a neat, happy ending—it is only a beginning, again. While he was locked up, Atkins missed the advent of cell phones and the Internet, the decline of his mother, and his sons’ childhood. Accustomed to living in constant watchfulness, he struggles to relearn trust. In this powerful book, we see how a single injustice is compounded, the injury extending to families and communities, and the aftershocks felt for years to come.
But from the rubble of a ruined life, Herman Atkins builds a bridge to the future, enrolling in college at age 34 and earning both an associate and a bachelor’s degree. As he adjusts to life as a free man, makes it to law school, and works to change from within the system that wronged him, readers will witness a triumph of determination and compassion. Alternately brutal and hopeful, shocking and inspiring, Wrongfully Convictedis as important as it is unforgettable.
At 21, Herman Atkins was convicted of raping a woman he had never met, in a town he had never visited. Twelve years later, he was set free.
In this gripping memoir, we are plunged into the nightmare of a justice system gone awry. What would you do if you were imprisoned for a crime you didn’t commit? And if you were exonerated at last, how would you measure what you had lost? For Atkins, these were the realities he had to face.
Raised by a police officer, Atkins moves from shock at the failure of institutions he’d trusted, to rage and hopelessness. He spends more than a decade in some of California’s most notorious prisons. He learns the rules of survival in a land of violence, and battles to maintain his strength and spirit.
And then, thanks to new DNA evidence, Atkins is proven innocent . . . and released into a world where he no longer seems to belong. Exoneration is not a neat, happy ending—it is only a beginning, again. While he was locked up, Atkins missed the advent of cell phones and the Internet, the decline of his mother, and his sons’ childhood. Accustomed to living in constant watchfulness, he struggles to relearn trust. In this powerful book, we see how a single injustice is compounded, the injury extending to families and communities, and the aftershocks felt for years to come.
But from the rubble of a ruined life, Herman Atkins builds a bridge to the future, enrolling in college at age 34 and earning both an associate and a bachelor’s degree. As he adjusts to life as a free man, makes it to law school, and works to change from within the system that wronged him, readers will witness a triumph of determination and compassion. Alternately brutal and hopeful, shocking and inspiring, Wrongfully Convictedis as important as it is unforgettable.
