Washington, United States
Almost seven decades has passed since the American Joe Ligon, 83, has spent in prison and is now trying to rebuild his life after being released and becoming the person who spent the most time behind bars in the US after his arrest as a minor.
Ligon entered prison in February 1953 at the age of 15 and served a sentence life imprisonment after pleading guilty to multiple charges in connection with the theft and stabbing of multiple people in Philadelphia, along with four other teens. At least two people were killed and six injured during that event.
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“I got involved inadvertently by standing on the street,” Ligon told CNN television after he was released from prison last week.
68 YEARS IN SIX DIFFERENT PRISONERS
The adolescent at the time, who racknowledged to have stabbed at least one person, was found guilty of two first-degree murders, although his attorney, Bradley Bridge, said in statements to that station that his client claims he never killed anyone.
The Washington Post newspaper recalled this Friday that this son of Alabama sharecroppers spent a total of 68 years in prison, during which time he spent six penalties.
During his trial, which lasted only one day in 1953, Ligon and the other defendants were described as people of “color” and was incarcerated in a prison called “Institution for Pennsylvania Guilty Offenderswhere prisoners classified as “mentally defective with criminal tendencies” were admitted.
In this time, the world has changed a lot: Ligon went to White House jail with Republican Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961) in the midst of the Cold War, and took to the streets with Democrat Joe Biden as president, in the midst of a global pandemic.
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“The boy who committed these crimes in 1953 no longer exists. The person released from prison in 2021 is 83 years old, has grown, changed and is not a threat,” his lawyer told CNN.
“He has more than repaired the damage he has done to society,” he continued, “and now it is fitting that he spend the last years of his life in freedom.”
THE PAINFUL WAY TO FREEDOM
In the 1970s, Ligon and the other arrested young men were given the opportunity to access leniency from the then Pennsylvania governor, and just as his two companions had agreed, the now eighty-year-old turned it down on parole.
Likewise, he repeatedly turned down other parole chances, saying he might have been under surveillance for the rest of his life, according to his attorney.
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Finally, Bridge, who represented him for 15 years, argued that life in prison for a crime committed when Ligon was a minor was unconstitutional, and managed to take the case to federal court, which approved him last November. .
Coming out of prison, Ligon faces the challenge of reintegrating into society after spending most of his life locked up and without everyday situations such as having a job, paying rent for an apartment, or utility bills.
He is not alone, however, as he continues to get help from his attorney and the Philadelphia-based Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project helping people in his situation. The first was to find accommodation for him through a program that a family found for him to live in during his reintegration process.