originally posted 7/4/2009
My son was wrongfully accused and forced to accept a plea bargain. It is now been over 10 years and he has not broken one law, not even a traffic ticket, pays child support for children he never gets to see and is serving a life sentence with his face, name, address plastered on the internet for all to see. His circumstances are of existing is to go to work everyday and living in a dump. He has no life and continues to do the right thing. His biggest crime at the time of the conviction was being addicted to drugs and young. He didn’t stand a chance with the weak court system and poorly appointed public defender. He had no rights then and still doesn’t. It is interesting that he never received his
day in court but instead was threatened and terrorized by the court that if he did not sign the plea bargain he would go to prison for 25 years.
When all is said and done he has a life sentence for something he didn’t do. There was never a physical examination of the allegedly victim and no witnesses, just hearsay from his ex girlfriend who lied repeatedly. My son passed a lie detector test but still was convicted. To this day we still have no clue as to what happened. I was going through cancer treatment at the time and was unable to attend the preliminary arraignments but was informed by the Public Defender that he had no choice but to sign the plea bargain or come up with at the minimum of $25,000 to have a decent defense and investigation. So here we are 10 plus years later with my son daily tortured by the horrendous
unproven lie. The plea bargain was for probation with a misdemeanor; the New York state laws did not require a lifetime registry for level 2’s at that time. It is all so insane. I am a school teacher and I cannot bring my son’s name up at any time for fear someone will look him up on the internet sex offender list.
Please keep me informed as to any changes in the laws and if there is any hope for my son to return to a normal life someday.