Austin Elias-de Jesus
Newsletter editor
For more than a decade as a staff writer at the magazine, Jennifer Gonnerman has chronicled the lives of those who have suffered under our nation’s criminal-justice system. She’s told the stories of Kalief Browder, a teen-ager jailed on Rikers for three years without trial; Clarissa Glenn, who fought to exonerate her husband in Chicago; Derrick Hamilton, a wrongfully convicted prisoner who became one of the most skilled jailhouse lawyers in the country; and many more.
In a piece published today, Gonnerman tells the story of Tyrone (Tony) Woodruff, who, while living in Buffalo in the late nineteen-seventies, gave false testimony that resulted in the decades-long imprisonment of three of his friends for murder. Woodruff, who was then just seventeen years old, has in the years since been adamant that he was pressured by police to incriminate himself and others. Now in his late sixties and living in Atlanta, Woodruff is still struggling to make sense of what happened. “I wish I wouldn’t have gotten manipulated so quickly,” Woodruff tells Gonnerman. “I’m still just living in a mental prison, still to this day. My mind never frees.”
How does a person begin to piece his life back together and make amends after all this? Gonnerman examines new evidence, recounts courtroom battles, and documents moments of mental trauma and reconciliation, as Woodruff tries to make things right—and the men whom he implicated seek to overturn their convictions. The resulting story is a staggering look at the human costs of a broken system—but it’s also a moving testament to the human capacity for forgiveness and compassion. It’s a crime story—a heartbreaking and maddeningly American one—in which justice has yet to be done, five decades later.
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Ian Crouch contributed to today’s edition.
