Like what has become American culture the story of Raymond Towler is one
in skin justice of America judicial system.
Towler is a calm man, according to Eric Adelson of
yahoo sport, A thoughtful man with salt-and-pepper beard and deep-set
eyes. He’s always had that demeanor, that peaceful vibe. When he was a
kid, back in the ’60s, his older half-brother tried to get him to mess
with some neighborhood kids in West Cleveland. Ray never would. He
wanted to play music or draw. He spent his time at a local park with an
easel or a sketchbook. That’s where a young woman on roller skates
noticed him a long time ago. It was 1981.
But this is no love story. In fact, the woman on roller skates
probably never saw Ray at all. She saw a black man who looked like Ray.
And that would be enough to change his life. Because on a sunny day in
May of that year, Towler was pulled over for rolling through a stop sign
in that park. The cops brought him down to the station because there
had been an incident nearby. The cops took Ray’s mug shot. And when the
woman on roller skates saw that picture, she thought, “That’s him.”
Days later, police came to the house where Towler lived with his
brother, mother and niece. He was cuffed and pushed into the backseat of
a patrol car. He was charged with the rape of an 11-year-old girl.
Ray, only 23, couldn’t afford a good lawyer. Nor could he think up a
convincing alibi. He didn’t spend much time with anyone other than his
family or his girlfriend. He wasn’t with them when the little girl was
attacked. So there was nothing he could do. It was his word against that
of the woman on roller skates. And why would she lie? What did she have
to gain? Ray stood in the courtroom, noticing the judge and the mostly
white jury looking angry. Hope drained away and fear crept in. He didn’t
have a criminal record and he served in the Army, but the state’s
attorney tore him up. “It was like trying to get out of an alligator’s
mouth,” he says. When asked by the judge if he had anything to say for
himself, he said, “You have the wrong person.” That wasn’t enough.
Ray was going away for life.
They sent him to a maximum security prison across the state in
Lucasville, where Ohio’s death-row inmates are housed. Ray’s girlfriend,
a percussionist named Jackie, wanted to stay in touch, but Ray knew
their relationship wouldn’t make it. He figured none of his
relationships would make it. Family members promised to visit, but
Lucasville was a long way, and visitation could be canceled for any
reason at any time, and it’s so depressing to see loved ones in orange,
behind bullet-proof glass. “I was alone,” Ray says. “I would have to do
this by myself.” He would spend seven years in max, and receive only
four visits.
Friendships didn’t really happen in prison. Why become close with
someone who could be dangerous, or someone who will die in front of your
eyes eventually, or someone who might be getting out? The feeling in
max was always tense, and eventually the Lucasville prison erupted into a
deadly riot in 1993. Ray avoided most interaction, spending most of his
time drawing or playing the guitar, the sound bouncing off the cement
walls. He was only allowed outside the prison grounds once, to attend
his mother’s funeral in shackles. “I’m not a big crier,” he says. “But
you can’t help it. Late at night, when everyone’s asleep, you let it
out.”
The options were few, and the pitfalls were many. “A lot of people
were sitting around mad,” he says. “What is their life about? I had to
make a decision not to let prison turn me into something ugly.” That
drew Towler closer to sports. He was not a huge sports fan as a free
man. He liked playing basketball and liked Magic Johnson and Oscar
Robertson, but he didn’t crave sports the way many of the rest of us do.
But on the inside, things were different. “I’m going to tell you how
important sports are,” says Robert McClendon, another Ohio native who
was imprisoned for a rape he didn’t commit. “No one does time by marking
Xs. That’s a bunch of crap. You do time in prison by season: football
season, basketball season, baseball season, Olympics, tennis, WNBA. This
is how we do time in prison. Prisoners become real big sports fans –
I’m talking huge. Cleveland fans even more so.”
Slowly, Ray started marking time with seasons – sports seasons. He
moved out of max, into a lower-security prison, in 1987, and he
eventually got a small TV. Not many games were on, and newspapers came
days late, but he followed Cleveland teams more than ever before. He
suffered through Michael Jordan’s shot over Craig Ehlo, though he didn’t
see it live and he still thinks Ehlo defended well on the play. And
although there were other heartbreaks (The Drive, The Ravens, Craig
Counsell, etc.), Ray watched everything. Though all else in his life had
withered, sports grew. It was a relationship that got stronger – and
one that couldn’t be taken away by an irritable warden. (Actually a lot
of wardens love sports also and let prisoners stay up late to watch the
end of games.) “Sports were my escape,” Towler says. “It was safe.
Nothing bad is going to happen because you’re watching a football game.
It’s something you could depend on year after year. It was a big thing.”
Raymond Towler hugs family members after he is released
from prison. The Innocence Project believes Towler is one of the
longest-held wrongfully imprisoned people in U.S. history.
(AP
photo)
Of course nothing could make prison life easy or even bearable, but
sports helped the days and years go by. And in this one way, Ray was as
able as a free man. If he had never been arrested, he would be watching
the games on TV anyway. He was going through something with the
Cleveland public – even if that something was constant losing. Yet while
free fans counted years since the last title, Towler counted days until
the next game. “I’m not a championships guy,” he says. “I just want a
contender.” Contending, after all, took up almost as much time as
winning titles.
The new millennium came like just another day on the endless
calendar, but it brought a little bit of hope for Ray. He spent a lot of
time in the library, studying legal issues and getting his associates
degree. Then, in 2001, another prisoner he knew, Michael Green, was
cleared after 13 years because of DNA testing. If there was evidence
held over from Towler’s own case, now more than 20 years closed, surely
it would show no trace of his DNA.
Towler wrote to the Innocence Project, a non-profit group dedicated
to using DNA evidence to overturn prior convictions. After five more
letters, he got a new lawyer. An envelope was recovered from the case –
one used to collect fingernails and hair clippings from the attack in
1981. Ray was sure this would be his way out.
But there was nothing inside. Maybe the evidence disintegrated over
time. Maybe it was tampered with. Maybe … maybe it didn’t matter. That
was it for Ray. He wasn’t getting out at all. “That was the lowest point
right there,” he says.
More years passed. Towler kept studying. He drew portraits for other
inmates and played guitar. LeBron James became his favorite player, and
he made the Cavs one of the best parts of Ray’s daily life.
In 2007, he turned 50.
Midway through the decade, Towler got a new Innocence Project
consultant from the University of Cincinnati College of Law named Mark
Godsey. He was sure the panties of the raped girl (now nearing middle
age) had DNA traces. It was just a matter of waiting until the
technology caught up. In 2010, it finally did.
Tests showed none of Towler’s DNA in the girl’s underwear. The courts
would have no choice but to overturn. Godsey couldn’t wait to get his
client on the phone, especially after listening to Ray’s half-brother
burst into tears at the news. But Ray, once again, was calm. His voice
hardly raised an octave when he told Godsey: “I already know I’m
innocent. When can I get out of here?”
Early in May, as the Cavs started their run toward a title, Towler
was back in a courtroom – this time in a sweater. A judge ruled him
free, read him an Irish blessing and shed tears with the ruling. Ray
grinned and hugged his relatives hard. The Innocence Project believes
Towler is one of the longest-held wrongfully imprisoned people in
American history.
The Cavs invited Raymond Towler to share the court with
them before Game 5 of the Eastern Conference semifinals.
(NBAE/
Getty Images)
Godsey and his staff took Towler out for pizza. He sat in the
restaurant, looking around at young people the same age he was when he
left society. They all held little rectangular devices up to their ears
and then in front of their faces. He wondered what they were.
The Cavs found out about Ray’s story and invited him to a game. They
gave him a jersey and VIP access to food he wasn’t able to eat for so
long. Ray thought of how surreal it seemed: a year before, or 25 years
before, no one would have allowed a convicted rapist into the parking
lot of an arena. Now he was special – honored. To the media, it seemed
perfect: the end of a man’s struggle and the end of his team’s drought.
But Ray knew better than anyone: some waits don’t end; they only
change seasons.
Towler hardly slept for weeks after getting out. He was overwhelmed
with stimuli, questions, confusion, fear. His first night of freedom was
spent at his brother’s house, where the cops had arrested him. That
terrified him. He was up all night, staring out the window, wondering if
he was safe or if this was some sort of horrible tease. The state of
Ohio owed him a hefty sum as compensation – more than $47,000 a year for
each year of his incarceration – but it could take years of legal
wrangling before he receives any money. But now Towler’s story is out
there, along with the knowledge that he is 52, single and technically
rich.
His friend, Robert McClendon, who also had a rape conviction
overturned after 18 years, warned him about this. “He’s a good man, a
gentle soul,” he says. “He has to determine who to trust. He has to know
who’s been there from the beginning.” But that’s hard for Ray, since
hardly anyone has been there from the beginning. More than a generation
has passed. At a July 4 cookout at his brother’s, he mentioned to a
guest, “Most of these people are family, but I don’t really know.” Later
he confided: “Some Towlers have popped up and they haven’t proven
themselves to me.” Towler is using his new BlackBerry to take photos of
all the people he encounters, to help him remember who they are. After a
month out of prison, he told a friend, “I don’t feel normal. I don’t
feel free.”
Then there’s the language gap. It’s not just the technobabble of the
times – Facebook, iPad, Twitter – it’s the way Ray has taught himself to
see the world. Everyone asks if he’s bitter about the judicial system.
They don’t know what to say when he quietly insists: “The judicial
system freed me.” He says he forgives the woman on roller skates and his
accusers and the jury. He forgives everyone. People wait for some
explosion of anger, but it never comes. Wallowing in self-pity and
resentment didn’t work in prison, so he’s not going to start now. While
everyone in the free world makes decisions based on an assumed payoff in
the future, Ray ditched that approach a long time ago.
So he’s a different kind of sports fan. It’s the rest of us who
expect the millionaire athletes to act right, work hard and bring home a
title – or else. Ray just wants them to play. He didn’t get through 29
years in prison by expecting much from others. No, he didn’t like “The
Decision,” but he’s dealt with much worse decisions. “Maybe LeBron isn’t
the answer,” he says. “We’ll keep looking.” He pauses.
“Gotta look at reality and deal with it.” Deal with it in did. Those
are the words that me cringe, are you kidding me, to spend almost 30
years behind bar for crime not committed and am not bitter about it,
something is wrong here just like the justice system.
Somewhere inside, Ray Towler does think about what he’s missed. His
one-time mentor, Michael Hampton, is now in the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame. He feels he could have been there with him. He thinks about
Jackie, his former girlfriend, and wonders where she is now. He never
imagined himself approaching 60 years old, working a mailroom job and
pausing for an extra second at every stop sign. Things aren’t ideal for
Ray. Not even close. But he’s looking forward to the next paycheck, his
next jam session and the next season. Both he and his team are starting
over from scratch. But that’s OK.
He can wait. That is the story of another black man wasted in prison,
at 60, he now know that justice in America for blacks is never just,
freedom is never free, and equal rights is never right once your skin is
black.
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