Nearly seven decades is the time that American Joe Ligon, 83, has spent in prison and now tries to rebuild his life after being released and become the person who spent the longest time behind bars in the United States . After being detained when he was a minor.
Ligon entered prison in February 1953 at the age of 15 and served a life sentence after being found guilty of several charges in connection with a robbery and stabbing of several people in Philadelphia, along with four other teens.
At least two people were killed and six injured during that event.
“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 prisons
The then-teenager, who admitted to stabbing at least one person, was found guilty of two first-degree murders, although his attorney, Bradley Bridge, said in statements to that channel 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 just one day in 1953, Ligon and the other defendants were described as people of ‘color’ and was incarcerated in a prison called ‘Pennsylvania Institution for Defective Offenders’ where inmates were classified as’ mental flawed with criminal tendencies ”.
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.
“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 road to freedom
The road to the desired freedom has been long and painful.
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.
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.