Must of been the happiest day of this man’s life. But he’ll never get those 18 years back. His youth spent in a prison. If you didn’t listen to Jim Swanson’s interview with Matt Kelly from the Innocence Project, you should. Every time I see an article like this I think of that interview, and the work done by those at The Innocence Project. It’s a great interview. Great organization. I’ve categorized this post under crime. And the crime is that this innocent man spent 18 years of his life in prison. My best wishes to him for a full and happy life!

After 18 years living inside a prison cell, Dwayne Allen Dail’s must-do list read like the menu of a country kitchen.

Pork chops for Tuesday dinner at his brother’s. Country ham and gravy for breakfast today. His mom promised to make him a peanut butter and molasses sandwich for a snack.

Dail, 39, left his youth behind in prison, paying for another man’s crime. Dail was 19, a day laborer and an aspiring rock singer when Goldsboro police arrested him on charges of raping a 12-year-old girl after breaking into her home.

Monday, DNA evidence extracted from the girl’s nightgown, forgotten since the night of her rape nearly two decades ago, proved what Dail had sworn all these years: He was innocent.

“I was an innocent kid and got snatched out of my life and thrown into another with dangerous people,” Dail said, whispering over the table at a pizza parlor an hour after being released. “I was scared. I was accused of doing something so far out of character, something so disgusting.”

Continue reading at the Charlotte Observer