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University of Georgia Press
September 2005
On Sale: September 12, 2005
286 pages
ISBN: 0820327840
EAN: 9780820327846
Trade Size (reprint)
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Non-Fiction Memoir
"With God as my witness, I have been falsely accused of
these crimes. I did not commit them. I'm an innocent man."
In 1983 Calvin C. Johnson Jr. spoke these words to a judge
who later handed down a life sentence for rape and related
crimes. Johnson spent sixteen years behind bars before he
was freed in 1999 after DNA testing conclusively ruled out
the possibility of his guilt. Exit to Freedom is the unforgettable story of Johnson's
unrelenting quest for justice against incredible odds and
under circumstances that threatened to shred his dignity and
hope. As Johnson recalls his trial and long journey toward
freedom through five Georgia prisons, he also speaks
candidly about everything from his middle-class childhood in
Atlanta to the reasons he came to be a rape suspect to the
steadfast support of his family. This is also a story of
faith: how Johnson found it in prison and how, he believes,
it played a role in his release. At the point in his prison term when Johnson thought that he
had exhausted all avenues of appeal, DNA-based forensics
began to make headlines. Eventually his case was taken up by
the Innocence Project, the nonprofit legal clinic renowned
for overturning convictions through DNA testing of evidence.
Years of delay followed, but Johnson eventually became the
sixty-first convict to be exonerated with the Innocence
Project's help. His is the only first-person account of a
wrongful conviction overturned through DNA testing. However disturbed readers may become by this portrait of a
justice system undermined by its own cynicism, Johnson
himself feels no bitterness toward his accusers. In a book
that offers many lessons about freedom, that may be the most
important one of all.
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