Last Tuesday, when Roosevelt Myles was released from prison after 28 years, he held a celebratory gathering at home with close family. His fiancee, Tonya Crowder, cooked fried chicken and french fries for everyone. But as the gathering went on, she became concerned that Myles was talking to everyone but not eating. Did he not like her cooking? Incarcerated for the length of their relationship, he’d never had a chance to try it. No, he told her, he just wanted their first meal home together to be special, just the two of them. So later, after everyone left, Crowder heated up a portion of the food and they ate together at the kitchen table. They’ve done so for dinner every night since.
The Illinois Appellate Court overturned Porter’s decision this past May, finding that Porter had improperly dismissed Myles’s new evidence, including testimonies from a man who says he was with Myles at the time of the crime, and from the original eyewitness, who has now recanted. Bonjean said the ruling “gets the job done,” though she disagrees with some of how the appellate court responded to Myles’s claims—including the fact that they didn’t address the long delay because, they said, Myles would have needed to present the transcript from every brief court date in the 20 years his case was pending. Bonjean said this would have been nearly impossible given that many of those court reporters are likely no longer working.
There have been challenges readjusting after 28 years inside, of course. The clothes that Myles’s family bought for his release no longer fit because he lost so much weight during his last few months inside due to anxiety about the pandemic, during which inmates were placed in continued lockdown without much information about what was going on. Myles has to learn from scratch how to use a smartphone and a computer. He’s relearning how to drive and has never pumped gas—before he went into prison, attendants still did it for you. He’s already learning about the stigma that comes with having served nearly 30 years of time—for example, a bank clerk treated him with suspicion when he explained why he hadn’t had an account in years. As a condition of his release, he has to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet, which requires him to be in the house before 10 AM and after 10 PM for 90 days, though the term might be cut short with good compliance. And, of course, he’s finally emerging into a pandemic-stricken world, with many of the gatherings and outings he might have hoped for upon release unavailable.
