It’s everyone’s worst nightmare: You’re touring a university at 17 years old, and then you get hauled into the police station along with two others and interrogated in connection with a sexual assault. You can’t afford a lawyer, so you get a public defender who doesn’t use alibi evidence that one of the other defendants uses (of course, he hired his own lawyer and was acquitted). You are convicted of sexual assault and sentenced to 28 years in prison.
That’s what happened to Jarrett Adams in 1998. He ended up serving nine years of his sentence.
He maintained his innocence throughout his time in prison and was convinced by his cellmate to pursue an appeal. He contacted the Wisconsin Innocence Project. Although they were skeptical that his case would be overturned, they accepted and agreed to work with him.
While he was studying his own case documents for his appeal, Adams began helping other inmates challenge their own convictions and collect wages that they were due.
When it came time to argue his case in court, Adams and the Innocence Project argued that he was not given adequate representation in court, and thus his conviction should be overturned. The three Seventh Circuit Supreme Court judges unanimously ruled in his favor.
Adams says of his original conviction:
“You have a problem in the criminal justice system where unfortunately it’s better to be rich and guilty than it is to be innocent and poor.”
Although his conviction was overturned, Adams still faced another potential court case for the same crime. Prosecutors offered him the option to plead guilty and have his sentence reduced to time served. Adams roundly declined, insisting on his innocence. Prosecutors decided to drop the case, and Adams was a free man.
By this point, Adams was a pro at self-education, so he taught himself nine years’ worth of technological and societal advancements and was accepted into Loyola Law School. This summer, he passed the bar and is now a Chicago lawyer clerking at the Seventh Circuit Court that freed him.
Adams describes his life now as “surreal:”
“I sit in the same court room, take notes, listen to the judge, observe the arguments, [while] not too long ago, I listened as lawyers argued my case in front of these same three judges.”
Now, this Chicago lawyer is determined to use his position as a public servant to help other wrongfully convicted inmates find their way from prison to being contributing members of society:
“Just to think, I was in a prison, and now, I’m a lawyer working for a Seventh Circuit Judge. I didn’t just take a ‘smart pill’ upon my release, so imagine if I had to serve this 19 years in prison and not be able to contribute to society right now… We may be locking up the cure to cancer, the cure to HIV, we may be locking up our next generation of believers and doers in the United States.”
Check out the video below on Adams’ path.
