Sunday, January 19, 2014

The road back from a wrongful conviction

Nicole Harris (Photo: Jennifer Linzer)

Exonerated mother battles ‘stigma’ of past while rebuilding her life

BY DUAA ELDEIB

As she marks her 32nd birthday Sunday, Harris spent almost eight years behind Nicole Harris is navigating job interviews bars before an appeals court, raising serious and graduate school applications. She’s questions about her conviction, reversed it. discovering just how delicate the And on a bright winter day nearly a year relationship between a mother and her ago, she was set free. teenage son can be. She is constantly on the Harris emerged from prison still hunt for a good book. mourning her son but determined not to give Yet still there are moments she yearns for in to bitterness. Soft-spoken, with deep the quiet of her prison cell. brown eyes and side-swept bangs, Harris is Nine years ago, Harris was a young quick to smile. Her penchant for hugs is a mother of two who’d overcome tremendous testament to her optimism and to the person obstacles to earn a college degree. Her boys, she was before her life unraveled. Jaquari and Diante, were just 4 and 5, but “When it first happened, of course I was she was already thinking about where she angry,” she said. “As years went on, I began might someday send them to college. to understand that there are evil people in Then Jaquari died. And she was convicted this world, and sometimes we suffer at the of killing him. hands of them. Injustice happens. But it’s a matter of how you respond to it, and anger because he wouldn’t stop crying, then would have done more hurt and harm to me returned to finish the laundry. Harris said than good.” police threatened her, told her she failed a Instead, she chose hope. Hope that she polygraph (something police disputed in can make up for lost time with the son she court documents) and promised she could go watched grow up under the florescent lights home if she cooperated. of the prison’s communal visiting room. Aching to see Diante, Harris confessed. That employers will recognize her She was 23. She said afterward that she innocence. That she can overcome the believed a judge would surely realize her hurdles that can overwhelm any exoneree, confession was false and let her go. But only specifically female exonerees. five months later — an extraordinarily A bright future speedy outcome for a murder case, which Jaquari died on a Saturday in May. often take years to go to trial — she was Harris and her longtime boyfriend, convicted and later sentenced to 30 years. Sta’Von Dancy, had just moved with their It was Diante who eventually helped free sons back to Chicago after spending four her. A federal appeals court found that his years downstate while Harris attended testimony was too powerful to have been Southern Illinois University. With Harris’s excluded and threw out her conviction. psychology degree in hand, the family The opinion, written by 7th U.S. Circuit settled into an apartment on the Northwest Court Appellate Judge David Hamilton, Side with bunk beds for the boys. The future outlined a number of questions about had never looked so bright. Harris’s confession, which the three-judge That fateful spring day in 2005, Harris panel later called “essentially the only and Dancy had left the boys home alone evidence against her.” with strict instructions to stay inside while The judges concluded that Diante’s they went to the laundromat across the testimony — supporting what Harris’s street. Harris said later that she regretted attorneys said all along, that Jaquari’s death leaving them but that she didn’t know was accidental — would have “changed the anyone nearby to baby-sit. entire tenor” of the case and likely returned They started a load and came back to find a different verdict. the boys outside. Harris struck them with a Months later, in February 2013, Harris belt, then sent them to their room. Having was released from a central Illinois prison. worked a double shift the night before, In June, the Cook County state’s attorney’s Dancy fell asleep. Harris went back to office announced that it would not retry her. retrieve the dry clothes. The day she walked out of prison, Harris When she returned, Dancy was carrying said she always believed the truth would Jaquari in his arms. He had discovered the come out. boy with an elastic cord wrapped tightly “I just knew that this was not my final around his neck. The cord had come loose destination,” she said. from his fitted bedsheet. ‘Still a stigma’ Diante had been in the room with his Since that triumphant moment, the elation younger brother. He told authorities that he of Harris’s newfound freedom has given saw Jaquari wrap the cord around his neck way to the more subdued realities of trying while playing, something his father had to rebuild her life. She fills her days looking testified that he’d seen Jaquari do before, for a job in her field but has run into one according to court records. But Diante was barrier after another. When she pulls out her barred from testifying at trial in part because resume during an interview, employers seem he believed Spider-Man, Santa Claus and impressed by the hospice work she did at the the tooth fairy were real. Illinois Department of Corrections until she Harris’s interrogation spanned 27 hours. tells them she was an inmate, not an Police believed that she killed her son employee. Her collection of news clippings More than 90 percent of people chronicling her legal odyssey does little to exonerated since 1989 were men, according put them at ease, she said. to the National Registry of Exonerations. “Even though I’m exonerated, it’s still The Women’s Project at Northwestern’s hard because I believe there’s a stigma Center on Wrongful Convictions reports that associated with it,” Harris said. “You can in 64 percent of cases where female convicts have the judge there saying she didn’t do it, went on to be exonerated, a crime was never but there is a certain view of people who committed. have been incarcerated.” The reasons vary, said Karen Daniel, the A hearing on her request for a certificate project’s director. Women are more likely to of innocence, which would formally clear be convicted in cases where an accidental or the murder conviction from her record, is natural death of a child or loved one is scheduled for Tuesday. The Cook County mistaken for murder. state’s attorney’s office has indicated that it “If there’s a death that authorities think is does not plan to oppose it. suspicious, they’re going to look to the A friend who also was exonerated after a caretakers, and often the caretakers are wrongful conviction helped her get an entry- women,” she said. “In Nicole’s case, police level position at Northwestern University, questioned both parents, and Nicole is the whose Center on Wrongful Convictions one who couldn’t take it anymore.” represented Harris in her appeal. She has to Complicating matters further, the crimes wake up at 5:15 a.m. to make it in on time, women are accused of do not commonly but it pays the bills, and for that she’s involve DNA, she said. That makes them grateful. harder to defend and exonerate. Harris hopes her work with Shari Trying to reconnect Berkowitz, an assistant professor of Early hardships helped shape Harris’s psychology at Roosevelt University who has perspective on loss. Her mother died of studied false confessions, will be enough for cancer when she was 10. Five years later, graduate schools to give her a chance to her sister passed away. Harris attended her prove herself. father’s funeral in shackles and her tan The two met at a lecture series on prison jumpsuit. wrongful convictions at which Harris spoke. These days, Harris relies on a small group Impressed by Harris’s warmth and passion, of family and friends for solace. She speaks Berkowitz brought her on to volunteer as a daily to her niece Wanda Harris, who at 42 research assistant in her lab. is more like a big sister or cousin. “For me, there was no hesitation,” They’ve reverted to their childhood Berkowitz said. “I know she’s innocent. nicknames and end each conversation the She’s smart. She’s kind. She’s reliable. ... same way. Getting to know her, it’s hard not to be her “I love you, Pumpkin,” Nicole tells friend.” Wanda. “I love you, Little Girl,” Wanda Harris is slowly making her way through replies. long-overdue milestones. She moved into Wanda said she lost a good friend because her own apartment in August. She’ll be able of her unwavering belief in Nicole’s to start saving for her first post-prison trip, innocence. New friends for Nicole are to New York, next month, she said. harder to come by. Since returning from “It’s my favorite place in the world, and I prison, Nicole is not as quick to trust people, have never been there,” Harris said. said Wanda. Delayed aspirations and gaps on resumes Harris’s lawyers admire her resolve to are common challenges for exonerees who remain upbeat but worry about what she spent large portions of their lives locked up. doesn’t say. What makes Harris’s case rarer than most is “Nicole is an amazingly strong and that she’s a woman. resilient woman, but this has left a permanent scar that she’s working hard to Other things are different, too. Harris and heal from but never fully will,” said Joey Dancy — Diante’s father — are no longer Mogul, an attorney with People’s Law together, though their son remains a bond Office, which is working with Harris on a between them, both parents said. possible civil lawsuit. “I’m happy for him to have her back. Day by day, Harris tries to win back Being a family was all we knew, then stolen time. She lost one son. She won’t let tragedy happened,” Dancy said in an her wrongful conviction take away another. interview last week, adding he always Harris recalls mornings before prison believed in Harris’s innocence. when she would brush Diante’s teeth and get Harris now treasures the weekends she him dressed for school. She remembers the spends with her son, the hours they spend feeling of love that would wash over her idly talking on her couch. She has quickly when she would wake to find him curled up learned that teenage boys don’t like to be next to her. fussed over — not in public, and especially Last year, when Harris’s attorneys were not on Facebook. She still finds it difficult to seeking her release, Diante was among say goodbye when their visits are over. about a dozen people who wrote a letter to “If at some point he says ‘I want to come the court on her behalf. His was the only one live with you,’ my door is always open,” she addressed to Harris. said. “Dear Mom, I miss you so much, I cannot She will always have the memory of the wait to see you,” Diante wrote. day she left prison. Diante waited for her in Within hours of her release, Harris talked the prison gatehouse with an “It’s Your about having Diante move in with her. Day” balloon and a teddy bear. He was the But Diante is 14 now, and lives with his first person to greet her when she walked father in Chicago. He gets good grades and out. He threw his arms around her. She beams when putting on the latest Jordan kissed him through the tears and ran her sneakers. Harris had to come to accept that hands across his face as if to make sure it moving Diante in with her would mean wasn’t a dream. uprooting him from the life he’s known. She At least for that moment, it was like they won’t do that to him, she said. never skipped a beat.