Blog: Surviving Injustice - Living on Licence

In the next installment of our Surviving Injustice series on the lived experience of the victims of wrongful conviction, one of APPEAL’s clients bravely shares their personal experience of the ongoing anguish of a miscarriage of justice, even after release from prison, while the fight continues to clear their name.

Is today my last day at home?

My last day of freedom?

Is it today that I lose the little I have managed to build up for myself...my home, I'm part way through decorating, my friendships I'm developing, my fragile family ties I'm strengthening?

I am on licence.

Life licence.

I trusted a system which failed me miserably, and I spent 14 years in prison for something I did NOT do. Wrongly convicted... How little people understand the reality of such a state. Living each day of those 14 years knowing I was being made to suffer - unjustly . My children were suffering. My family was broken. All because the system I trusted got it wrong.

And now, since my parole, I live "on licence". Subjected to conditions that same faulty system feels appropriate for me and my life.

But I follow their rules. I do what my licence insists I do.

And today, almost three years since my release from prison, the probation services, those who ensure I adhere to my licence, are having a meeting...a lifer panel...to which I am NOT invited. No legal representation for me either. Just a few people, who don't truly know me, meeting to discuss my fate.

Whether I should be allowed to continue trying to build a life. Whether I should be recalled, returned to prison, to continue a (wrongful) life sentence.

And I am expected to trust these people?! These people who are part of the same system that convicted me?!

I KNOW I have done nothing wrong. Nothing to justify recalling me to prison. But I also know I had done nothing wrong last time. And trusting the system resulted in 14 years in prison 

How can I trust? How can I not panic? Not worry? How do I know that today ISN'T my last day at home? My last day of freedom?

*** This former prisoner heard the following day that the panel was happy for them to remain at liberty.