The New York Times has an amazing interactive feature on all the US inmates who have been released due to DNA testing. You could easily spend hours there (I just did), but if you’re looking for a quick, painful introduction to the difficulties these men (and one woman) face, this should suffice.
I have many more thoughts on this issue, but I have to be at work in 5 hours.
At work, I make a point to do everything that the guys do. I lift heavy boxes, I chase shoplifters, I build displays. Outside of work, I get by without a guy’s help – I can fix small things on my car, I get things off high places, I change lightbulbs, I can program my own VCR.
Tonight, while driving home, I passed a Mercedes pulled over on the side of the road. Nothing too uncommon there, but as I drove past, I saw that the passenger’s side door was open, and a person was kind of leaning in the seat. Another person was kneeling next to them on the ground.
Immediately, I slowed down. What if something was wrong? What if they needed help but didn’t have a phone? It was a dark road with little traffic, and the chances of someone else driving by any time soon was low.
But as soon as I slowed, I sped back up. My shortcut from my apartment to work goes exactly one block away from the “bad side” of town. This car was parked on the road that borders that side. This “bad side” really is – it’s a neighborhood no pizza delivery place will touch because so many of their drivers have been killed there. Not carjacked or mugged or robbed (they’ll still deliver to those neighborhoods – I should know. I got to take my roommate, who was delivering pizzas at the time, to the emergency room after the guys who stole his money and his phone decided that they might as well bash his face in as well), but killed.
This car was parked on the street that borders that neighborhood. If they’d been one block south or east of there, I would have stopped. But because I’m a girl, and I’m alone, and I’m unarmed, I felt like I couldn’t. All I could think was that maybe it was a drug deal gone bad, or a fight between a couple, or just a child fallen asleep in the car while his mother was visiting a friend at the house down the street. Either way, I didn’t need to be involved.
But I still wish I could have stopped, just to make sure.