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[Applause] [Music] my name is Barry Sheek I'm co-director of the Innocence Project uh this is a
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great day this is the man of the hour DAV Ido the 300th postconviction DNA Exon in the United
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States if you can imagine spending 15 years of your life for a crime you didn't commit
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in a 6x9 cell isolated 23 hours a day Despair and depression is something we can all understand but to overcome that
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despair that takes an extraordinary human being none of us could possibly imagine what he has gone through or what
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any of the men behind us have gone through during ing their experiences this is a damn good day at the office I
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tell you and all I I want to say is if this case doesn't teach us if we can't figure
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out how to have a death penalty that doesn't put innocent men on Death Row then we don't we don't deserve to have
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it Damon well I want to thank everybody here at this table um it's been a long journey it's people like y'all
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who give people like us a chance and I hope that uh in the future cases like ours can be used as
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examples of what not to do during an investigation or uh interrogation and even during the court process we'll take
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some questions when you were released when you walked out what was that like for you
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it's it's kind of like you dream of it every day but it's not it's not the same as actually going through it it's it's
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it's a sural walk what are you looking forward to now peace and quiet a good dinner we're not telling
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you nice uh just concentrating on putting my life back together and moving forward Point did you feel like giving
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you know at first you do feel like that sometimes you know but the minute you give up completely is
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is the minute you die period how do you feel now free