MARCH (^) | FROM THE EDITOR
BY SUSAN GOLDBERG PHOTOGRAPH BY MARTIN SCHOELLER
The Costs of Wrongful
Convictions
DEATH-ROW
EXONERATIONS
Derrick Jamison (above)
spent 20 years on death row
before his wrongful conviction
was overturned. He’s now a
member of Witness to Inno-
cence, the anti–death penalty
group co-founded by Sister
Helen Prejean and death-row
exon eree Ray Krone. Martin
Schoeller (below) raised
funds for the group as part
of his project to photograph
men and women who’ve
been freed from death row.
Schoeller’s project will be
the subject of an ABC News
prime-time special this spring.
SINCE 1972, 180 MEN AND TWO WOMEN
in the United States have been freed
from death row after being found inno-
cent of the crimes for which they were
sentenced to die. Martin Schoeller, a
longtime National Geographic contrib-
utor known for his haunting, close-up
portraits, has photographed, filmed,
and interviewed 17 of them.
Schoeller brought these photos to us
and our colleagues at ABC News (both
organizations are owned by The Walt
Disney Company). His goal: He wants
people to reconsider their support for
the death penalty, which today in Amer-
ica can be imposed by 28 states, the
federal government, and the military.
Schoeller hopes that people who see his
photos “feel like ‘This could have been
me—and they were sentenced to death
for something they didn’t do.’ That’s the
reason I did this: To create work that will
change some people’s hearts.”
Whether you support or oppose
the death penalty, there’s no question
that Schoeller’s portraits and stories of
exonerated former prisoners are pow-
erful. These people were caught up in a
Kafkaesque nightmare, often caused by
police or prosecutorial misconduct, or
witnesses who lied or were mistaken.
Most of the wrongly convicted had
poor legal representation; dispropor-
tionate numbers of them were peo-
ple of color, from low-education and
low-income backgrounds. They sat on
death row, typically in solitary confine-
ment, sometimes for decades. They
missed their own parents’ funerals.
Their children grew up without them.
Ultimately, they were freed by DNA
evidence, better lawyers, or events that
caused the truth of their innocence
to come out. After all that, most are
managing to go on, reclaiming their
lives with varying degrees of success.
Schoeller has a unique perspective
on how they do it. For another recent
project, he has been taking portraits of
now elderly survivors of the Holocaust.
He’s found that the two groups have
something important in common, he
told me: “They are able to forgive. There
are so many reasons that you can be
hateful and mad at people, but you have
to have the ability to forgive. Otherwise
it just eats you up,” he said. “The people
who can’t get to that conclusion emo-
tionally, they don’t make it.”
For most of National Geographic’s
133 years, photography has been cen-
tral to our mission. Martin Schoeller’s
portraits remind us why: Because even
in a streaming-media age, still photos
can reveal indelibly powerful stories.
Thank you for reading National
Geographic. j
SCHOELLER PORTRAIT: KATHY RYAN
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