48 years, 1 month and 18 days. It is the time that Glynn Simmons He has been behind bars for a crime he did not commit: “The wrong person in the wrong place”, He laments now, explaining the reasons that led him to spend much of his life behind bars: “The police needed a young black man, it was 1975.” At that time, Simmons was only 22 years old. He was convicted of murdering a woman in a robbery of an Oklahoma liquor store.

In the recognition lineup A witness pointed him out as a suspect.. To him and other people, but that information never reached the judge. The witness, who was also shot at the time of the robbery, testified in court that Simmons was one of the two men who shot and committed the robbery. Following the trial, Glynn Simmons was sentenced to the death penalty, later commuted to life imprisonment. He has always defended his innocence, in fact, he always said that at the time of the crime he was not even in Oklahoma.

In July of this year they released him and it is now that they have exonerated him of all charges because The evidence against him was circumstantial and unclear. Even the assistant prosecutor went so far as to say, in a press conference, that evidence was missing and that the police department did not obtain evidence from the crime scene. He is now happy and willing to enjoy the freedom that was so unjustly taken from him.

This sentence is the most unjust and the longest in the United States. Although for Simmons it has been a learning experience: “It is a lesson in resilience, in tenacity, in having faith and in believing“he says with a smile and without a trace of resentment. What’s more, his task now, at 71 years old and fighting liver cancer, is to help repair the judicial system so that no innocent person serves time.