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Part Three Coping with Innocence The day our participants walked out of prison the challenges described in part 2 were embedded in their daily struggles to rebuild their lives. They all needed to start a new life, to reconnect with partners, children, family, and friends, and to find a place away from the pain and trauma that had consumed them since their wrongful conviction . But with neither help from the state nor official recognition of their innocence, many begin life outside prison bereft of money, a home, employment, and health care and depend on a small group of loved ones who also have been traumatized by their ordeal. How do they begin to rebuild? To avoid psychological breakdown, homelessness, and even reincarceration, they must confront these issues of physical, economic, and emotional survival. What strategies do they use to negotiate the internal and external barriers to reintegration into their families and communities? How do they move forward? How do they cope? The exonerees’ coping begins when they hear that they have been found guilty and sentenced to death, facing execution for a crime they did not commit. They are transported to prison, most of them directly to death row, fearing for their own survival, let alone their freedom. They must cope with living on death row while knowing that they do not belong there. We begin with this piece of their coping process in chapter 8. In chapter 9, we introduce the coping strategies adopted by exonerees as they negotiate reintegration back into their communities. People wrongly convicted of crimes, in particular of capital crimes, are much like other survivors of life-threatening trauma. Their experience, for example, resembles that of survivors of disasters, survivors of prolonged abuse, or prisoners of war in that exonerees have faced P C o p i n g w i t h I n n o c e n c e 106 protracted abuse and stigma attacking core beliefs about their self and the world around them. Research into coping mechanisms used by these similarly situated survivors provides insight into coping strategies used by exonerees. These strategies, however, vary among exonerees and over time. Thus, we also outline factors that affect coping and strategy choice. A significant component to the coping process is the task of reclaiming innocence as core to their identities. Since their wrongful conviction, others—police, prosecutors, the media, even family—have controlled the definition of who they are. The exonerees are defined as murderers, rapists, perpetrators, prisoners, heinous monsters not worthy of life. Even after exoneration and release, they often return to communities where they are not welcome. Community members believe they “got out on a technicality” and call them out in grocery stores, churches, and restaurants. While the exonerees work on finding a job, rebuilding their families, and overcoming their anger and depression, they face attacks on their self and identity and must find ways to combat stigma to reconstruct a new self based on innocence. The central roles that identity reconstruction and stigma management play in coping are addressed more fully in chapter 10. At the heart of the exonerees’ attempts to reintegrate is their need to rebuild identity around their claims of innocence. This often requires battling opposing claims from community members and system officials who insist on their guilt. Coping with innocence transcends their battles to reintegrate and rebuild and cuts to the core of who they are and the new self they want others to know. ...

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