Innocent Man Released From Prison after 16 years Shares How The World as he knew it Has Changed

click to read full article from CNN
By Stephanie Chen, CNN

CNN) -- To see the world through Greg Taylor's eyes, imagine being stuck in a time machine for 16 years and delivered to 2010.
Facebook, flat screens and DVDs are all new to him. Relationships that used to come with natural ease seem awkward.
Since 1993, Taylor, now 47, had been locked away in North Carolina's prison system for the murder of a prostitute. Last month, he was exonerated and freed.
"All that frustration and confusion I had stored up all those years was just let out," Taylor said, recalling the day he was released, February 17. "There was a lot of relief and gratitude. There was a whole lot to get used to."
He agreed to jot down his impressions and share them with CNN.
After a month readjusting to life outside prison, Taylor has concluded that Facebook is "neat but a waste of time." He's in awe that a flat, round disk called a DVD lets him rewind and fast-forward movies by just pushing a button. He finds the automatic soap dispensers in the mall bathrooms startling.
Taylor is the first man to be exonerated by a state innocence commission, which makes his case stand out from those of the more than 500 people across the country who have been exonerated by the work of private attorneys, according to the Life After Exoneration program.
The group that freed Taylor, the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, was created in 2006 after a succession of wrongful convictions were revealed. It's a one-of-a-kind program with a state-mandated panel that re-examines questionable cases, including those that don't involve DNA evidence like Taylor's.
Other jurisdictions are following North Carolina's lead, looking at creating government agencies to prevent and reverse wrongful convictions. In New York City, the Manhattan District Attorney's office launched a program this month to proactively flag common errors such as witness misidentification and false confessions before the case go to trial.
A petition filed before the Florida Supreme Court by a group of attorneys asks the state to create an agency based on North Carolina's model that will examine why wrongful convictions occur. Attorneys hope gathering useful data on eyewitness misidentifications and snitch testimony will highlight systemic flaws that need repair.
In Taylor's case, the commission considered new tests that revealed that a stain found in Taylor's truck was not blood, as the prosecutor had argued. The commission also reviewed testimony from the jailhouse informant who implicated Taylor at the trial.
By the time the commission decided to free Taylor on February 17, he had already spent a total of 16 years behind bars.
That day, he stumbled out of the courthouse without shackles for the first time. He grinned when his 26-year-old daughter embraced him tearfully. No longer a 9-year-old, Kristen Puryear had a child herself, making Taylor a grandfather.
She drove while her father sat in the passenger seat.
The post-exoneration journey is daunting for many former inmates, most of whom have spent a large portion of their adult lives in institutional settings.
The Life After Exoneration Program found one out of three inmates has lost custody of children. About 25 percent develop post traumatic stress disorder, but access to counseling and medical care is limited without employment.
Unlike parolees, who are convicted of crimes, those exonerated don't have access to corrections services.
When Taylor left prison, the state of North Carolina gave him a $45 check. It was intended to get him a hotel room and back on his feet. The amount makes him laugh.
Taylor spent his first day after his release at the mall, eager to trade his scratched plastic prison glasses for new ones. He passed a bakery where the aroma captivated him. In prison, sights and smells are muted, he explained. Inmates wear identical uniforms and eat the same tasteless cafeteria food.
"I could have stood there all day," he said.
Incarceration can also place strains on relationships with loved ones. For Taylor, it separated him from his wife and some of his closest friends.
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JMC Ministries Response

After reading this story of this man who spent 16 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit and now to be pretty much thrown back into society. And to think how different the world was 16 years ago. It would be quite frightening in a way. Everything you knew about the world is completely different. So much has happened in our country alone. It has to be quite a shock to your system.

I then think of the countless others not just in the U.S but around the world who are imprisoned for crimes they didn't commit. Or imprisoned because of Religious oppression which we hear about now so much more in the news. To think of how these people would react to what the world has become and how it has changed so much in just a few years. Or even a few days for example with the passing of the Health Care Reform bill here in the U.S. Life as we know, or knew is no more.  At times it is like we are just like this man we wake up and look around and everything is different. And we ask our selves "where was I when all this happened?"