Nick Yarris: innocent on death row for 22 years

“The death penal­ty is not the worst thing we can do to a human being; putting some­one away for the rest of their nat­ur­al life while they sit and watch every­thing they have ever loved rot and die is the worst. That’s why I vol­un­teered to be exe­cut­ed rather than lan­guish­ing in eter­nal hell.”

Nick Yarris is cer­tain­ly well qual­i­fied to make this pow­er­ful state­ment. In 1982 the trou­bled deliv­ery dri­ver was wrong­ly con­vict­ed of the rape and mur­der of Lin­da May Craig and spent 22 years on death row in his native Penn­syl­va­nia.

Yarris’ prison night­mare end­ed in 2004 when he was exon­er­at­ed thanks to DNA evi­dence. He had read about the nascent sci­ence of DNA test­ing in a news­pa­per arti­cle in 1989 and became one of the ear­li­est of America’s death row inmates to seek to use it to prove his inno­cence.

“The major­i­ty of peo­ple giv­en the evi­dence that was pre­sent­ed would think that it was an open-and-shut case against Nick,” Robert Dun­ham, a ven­er­at­ed appel­late lawyer – who rep­re­sent­ed Yarris in the state post-con­vic­tion appeals (though was not respon­si­ble for his exon­er­a­tion) – and now exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Death Penal­ty Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter, tells Racon­teur.

“He had the same blood type as the mur­der­er, by unfor­tu­nate coin­ci­dence, and four sep­a­rate eye wit­ness­es claimed to have seen some­one who matched his descrip­tion at the shop­ping mall from where the vic­tim was abduct­ed.

“He had false­ly impli­cat­ed some­one else in anoth­er case an attempt to cut him­self a deal, and his only defence was an ali­bi, with one wit­ness being his moth­er who had good rea­son to sup­port his defence, and the oth­er being a store clerk. Objec­tive­ly most juries would have con­vict­ed Nick.”

Fol­low­ing years of dis­tress­ing set­backs, includ­ing when a box of DNA sam­ples was acci­den­tal­ly destroyed en route to a lab­o­ra­to­ry, Yarris sought the most extreme relief from his impris­on­ment: in 2002 he dropped his legal appeals so that the exe­cu­tion process could be car­ried out. It was only when a judge demand­ed one last round of DNA test­ing that he was cleared, after the evi­dence came back that there were traces of two unknown peo­ple on the victim’s cloth­ing.

“The DNA not only showed that Nick didn’t do it, it showed that all of this oth­er evi­dence was wrong,” adds Dun­ham. “And it’s that type of error that we see in case after case. DNA test­ing erodes con­fi­dence in the reli­a­bil­i­ty of these oth­er forms of evi­dence.”

How it happened

Yarris grew up in a Philadel­phia sub­urb and a hap­py child­hood was irrepara­bly frac­tured at the age of sev­en, when he was set upon by an old­er boy. The teenage aggres­sor whacked him on the head – so hard it caused brain dam­age – before rap­ing the young­ster, who couldn’t face telling his par­ents or five sib­lings what had hap­pened. The result­ing trau­ma trig­gered a down­ward spi­ral, and by his late teens he was “a drug-addled kid”, Yarris says.

Aged 20, he was arrest­ed, at the wheel of a stolen car and under the influ­ence of drugs, and was accused of the attempt­ed kid­nap and mur­der of a police offi­cer. Although he was acquit­ted of those charges, while in cus­tody before that tri­al, and in a des­per­ate bid to reduce his jail time, he con­coct­ed a sto­ry, nam­ing a drug-addict acquain­tance he thought had died as the sus­pect in the rape and mur­der of Lin­da May Craig, which he had only read about in the news­pa­per. When it tran­spired that the per­son he had accused was alive and had no involve­ment in the inci­dent he effec­tive­ly made him­self the prime sus­pect.

Once con­vict­ed, and sen­tenced to the death penal­ty, Yarris spent almost all of his time in prison in soli­tary con­fine­ment. For 14 years, between 1989 and 2003, he was not touched by anoth­er human being – apart from in anger. In a piti­ful attempt to com­bat lone­li­ness he resort­ed to lying on his arm until it became numb, and would then use it to rub his face to pre­tend he was being stroked by a loved one.

They didn’t turn us in to mon­sters with their tor­ture, they made us lov­ing, because we were able to for­give them when they got it wrong

There were numer­ous oth­er unimag­in­able, unfor­get­table hor­rors, not least when he was forced by prison guards to fight with men­tal­ly dis­turbed inmates. “Oh man, I’ve been stran­gled, bro­ken my hand, and much more,” Yarris tells Racon­teur, recall­ing the bru­tal enforced scraps. “They would last five min­utes, or until one man went down. A cou­ple of times I had to fight men who were seri­ous­ly psy­cho­path­ic, with men­tal derange­ments and anger issues. They didn’t have med­ica­tion to con­trol them, and they were being taunt­ed and pumped up by the guards. By the time they entered the cage they were like froth­ing, crazed ani­mals. Thank God I’m 6’2”, weigh 14st, and know how to fight.”

On anoth­er occa­sion, an utter­ly defence­less Yarris was ambushed and bat­tered vicious­ly by uniden­ti­fi­able guards in an attack that ulti­mate­ly led to him con­tract­ing hepati­tis C. “They got me good,” he con­tin­ues. “It was a year and day after I had tried to escape prison, and I was tricked in to going into a room where four men dressed in black masks and riot gear were wait­ing for me. I was beat­en up for four min­utes, which seemed to go on for­ev­er.

“They shat­tered the side of a trans­verse bone in my low­er back, bust­ed my right eye sock­et, the reti­na of my left eye became detached, and 12 teeth were bro­ken out of my mouth. Then they parad­ed me around on their trun­cheons to show the oth­er inmates what pun­ish­ment they would suf­fer if they tried to escape.

“Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the den­tist didn’t clean the returns on the units, and infect­ed me with hepati­tis C. So when, at the age of 42, I stepped out of a max­i­mum secu­ri­ty prison, where I’d spent 8,067 days, I was expect­ed to die with­in two years, because my renal out­put was so bad. Back then there were no real cures for hepati­tis C, just the old treat­ments which tox­i­fied my sys­tem so bad­ly it blind­ed me and near­ly killed me. That was until I had a liv­er trans­plant. I was one of the first cas­es cured; I’m actu­al­ly a mir­a­cle. I was clean with­in six months of walk­ing out of prison.”

On death row

When asked about how he read­ied him­self with the prospect of being exe­cut­ed, and in error, Yarris says: “I was not a right­eous per­son, so I whole­heart­ed­ly flung myself in to pay­ing for the mis­deeds that I did as a young man – for every win­dow I broke, every­thing I stole, every drug I took, every­thing I did wrong in my life.

“It is not the sword of Damo­cles that both­ers you when you are on death row; it’s the fact that every­one has a sword over them and the pres­sure is so intense that they act dif­fer­ent­ly, as des­per­ate men do. Those who are fac­ing the worst sit­u­a­tions can act with the worst behav­iour, but also the most beau­ti­ful behav­iour. It’s crazy how it is dia­met­ri­cal­ly dif­fer­ent, but it’s true.

“I chose very dili­gent­ly to tap into what­ev­er was worth liv­ing for, and read so much; most men don’t do that on death row. I saw my fam­i­ly as the vic­tims more than myself, because they had no pro­tec­tion, no walls to stop the scorn of soci­ety. Peo­ple would spit in my mother’s face, and call her the moth­er of a mur­der­er, because she was my ali­bi wit­ness.”

Yarris was freed with no apol­o­gy and, after over two decades on death row, found the tran­si­tion to ‘nor­mal life’ incred­i­bly tough. “With­out guid­ance I was expect­ed to set­tle back in to soci­ety, with peo­ple fling­ing them­selves at me with hugs and emo­tion,” he says. “It was full on, and I had no sup­port sys­tem, no mon­ey, no job, no qual­i­fi­ca­tions. It was the great­est chal­lenge you can imag­ine.

“For so long I lived in a world where if I expressed anger some­one was going to bust me in my face, so I knew bet­ter. Out here we don’t know that penal­ty, so that’s why I’m not both­ered by every­thing I went through, and I learned how to con­trol my emo­tions.”

In a piti­ful attempt to com­bat lone­li­ness he resort­ed to lying on his arm until it became numb, and would then use it to rub his face to pre­tend he was being stroked by a loved one

In 2005, Yarris moved to Eng­land, and cur­rent­ly resides in Ilch­ester in Som­er­set, hav­ing become enam­oured by the coun­try fol­low­ing an invi­ta­tion to speak to mem­bers of par­lia­ment about his tra­vails. The 51-year-old, who has since become a father, now cam­paigns for the abol­ish­ment of the death penal­ty, and has addressed Unit­ed Nations and Euro­pean Union offi­cials, and spo­ken at hun­dreds of schools.

“The fact that 159 peo­ple have been exon­er­at­ed in Amer­i­ca since 1973, with some­thing like 22 cleared thanks to DNA evi­dence, shows that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is insane,” he adds.

“I, like the oth­er 158 men set free from death row, am a liv­ing exam­ple that it’s a lie, and does­n’t work. We didn’t get out of prison and start killing peo­ple in vengeance, in anger, just like the state tried to do to us. The remark­able thing is all of the peo­ple that I know who have been exon­er­at­ed from death row are the most car­ing, gre­gar­i­ous­ly sweet-heart­ed peo­ple you could imag­ine.

“They didn’t turn us in to mon­sters with their tor­ture, they made us lov­ing, because we were able to for­give them when they got it wrong. We like to think that we are per­fect as human beings, but we are not. At the end of the day, we don’t have any right to play with people’s lives, and kill one anoth­er.”

(Pho­to by Alessan­dra Benedetti/Corbis via Get­ty Images)