“Degraded and alone:
And some men curse, and some men weep,
And some men make no moan:
But God’s eternal Laws are kind
And break the heart of stone.”
(Oscar Wilde)
“The innocent man,” by Pamella Colloff, is a vigorous piece of narrative journalism (the so called long-form). Originally published in the Texas Monthly Magazine and selected to The Best American Magazine Writing 2013, the article profiles Michael Morton and his drama in the hands of the justice system: wrongly imprisoned by the murder of his wife, he spent many years in jail to eventually be acquitted by a formerly disregarded piece of material evidence—a slightly bloodstained bandanna collected in the surroundings of the crime scene. The advent of DNA tests shedded a new light on the case, saving Morton and ultimately revealing the track of the true culprit, a serial killer with many other victims.
The human drama depicted is touching—Morton’s imprisonment left his small kid in custody of his wife’s relatives. Coming home from work one evening to find one’s spouse brutally murdered and after a few weeks to be charged and convicted, lose one’s freedom, one’s son, public respect (practically no one believed in his innocence) was too cruel a strike of fate. After the lengthy period in prison, Morton faced yet a second challenge: re-adapting to normal routine and trying to fix a lifetime of misunderstandings and broken family bonds.
His notable fortitude before injustice is intriguing—how did he find emotional tools to persevere alone year after year? He apparently bore the whole process with heroic stoicism—, according to Colloff, it was this very undisturbed posture that initially testified against him before the jury, who mistook it as a sign of heartlessness. A very good reading. After having finished it, I caught myself feeling a silent, genuine but impotent human solidarity with the suffering of this unknown fellow.
