After prison the guilty get help, the innocent get nothing. This man wants to fix that

On the morning of Aug. 29, Darryl Burton climbed out of bed and immediately dropped to his knees.

He whispered a prayer of thanks because that day marked the 10-year anniversary of his being exonerated and released from a Missouri prison after serving 24 years for a crime that he didn’t commit.

Burton had been wrongly convicted in the killing of a St. Louis man before a Missouri judge ruled that his 1985 trial was flawed. The conviction was based on the testimony of two men, one who changed his story and another who had more felony convictions than the jury was told.

Now, through the newly formed Miracle of Innocence foundation, Burton hopes to aid other recent exonerees in the Midwest.

Burton, an associate pastor for the Johnson County-based Church of the Resurrection, noted a perversity of the justice system: while guilty people paroled from prison can benefit from a number of established programs, innocent people get no help at all.

“When I came home there was nothing in place for an exonerated person,” Burton said Thursday.

His new organization would change that, providing the newly exonerated with re-entry resources such as housing referrals, education, individual and family counseling, job and transportation assistance.

“No one understands what our needs are,” Burton said. “Coming home from an experience like that, we have been traumatized on so many fronts – emotionally, mentally and spiritually. We need someone who can help us process what has taken place in our lives.”

The group will also offer legal help for prisoners who feel they have been wrongly accused.

The Miracle of Innocence foundation will be unique because it is led by exonerees and is among the first such groups in the Midwest. It is affiliated with the New Jersey-based Centurion Ministries, which is the group that helped Burton prove his innocence.

The organization says that between two and five percent of the 2.2 million incarcerated inmates in the United States are innocent.

The foundation, which was established in July 2017, will have its official launch at 6:30 p.m., Saturday at the Foundry, located inside the church’s Leawood campus, 13720 Roe Ave.

The event will feature live music. Lamonte McIntyre, who was released from prison in 2017 after serving 23 years in a Kansas prison for a double murder he says he did not commit, will also speak at the event.

The McIntyre case prompted Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree to launch a conviction integrity unit to research claims of innocence, prosecutorial misconduct and law enforcement error. Dupree said his office has preliminarily identified 19 cases that need additional review.

Burton understands the struggle of rejoining society after years in prison.

He said it took him years to find full-time employment. He also has worked to reconnect with his daughter, who was 7 months old when he was convicted decades ago.

“When I came home, she’s a 25-year-old young woman and that was challenging trying to figure out our roles, how to be a father or a parent to someone who didn’t know me,” he said.

Since his release, Burton said, he has received countless phone calls and pleas for help from families who have loved ones in prison. Burton knows the heartache and misery many of them are experiencing. The foundation is positioned to help the inmates and their families, he said.

“I found myself in a fetal position in those cells, in those bunk beds just curled, wishing that it was a nightmare that would just go away,” he said. “I know others who are in prison who feel the same way.”