After 22 years on death row, Nick Yarris has a new start on life

After spending nearly half his life on Pennsylvania's death row, ex-con Nick Yarris -- cleared through DNA tests in the 1981 rape-murder of an Upper Chichester woman -- has had nearly 32 months to start a new life. He now calls England his home. He's been living overseas the past two years with his wife, Karen, and their newborn daughter, Lara Rebecca.

It's a life he never dreamed of after being diagnosed in prison with hepatitis C and serving 22 years behind bars while awaiting execution. It was 8,057 days of living hell he'll never forget. Yarris, 45, a native of Southwest Philadelphia, was not only the first person convicted of murder to request unprecedented DNA testing (in 1988) in both Delaware County and Pennsylvania, but also in the United States, he says.

He was convicted in Delaware County Court in the December 1981 murder of Linda May Craig, 32, an employee at the Tri-State Mall whom law enforcement authorities alleged he stalked and abducted after work.

Yarris recently flew back home with his wife and infant daughter to spend several days with his parents and family in Southwest Philadelphia. It was the first time his parents had seen their granddaughter. And as an advocate against the death penalty and supporter of other death-row inmates he believes to have been wrongfully convicted, he also recently addressed incoming students at Haverford College with his longtime attorney, Peter Goldberger of Ardmore. "I have to say that I'm grateful," Yarris said. "I've had the chance in England to start my life all over even though my life had begun again in 2004 when I was released. "The one thing I'm very aware of when I walk down the street: I don't assume everyone owns a gun the way I assume here in America," Yarris said. "And I feel a little bit safer knowing there's not a thousand guns on the street," he said.

"I also appreciate not living under the threat that the U.S. poses to me to take my life away at any time because I have the three-strikes-against-me law," Yarris said. "One (conviction) is for escaping from death row for a crime I was innocent of" and the others were crimes he committed during his 25 days on the lam in Florida after escaping from county deputy sheriffs in 1985.

Living in England, he said he feels "as though I have a clean slate and not worrying about someone making up a charge against me and I go to prison for life for stealing a slice of pizza."

Two days after his daughter was born, British doctors notified him via mail that his hepatitis C was completely gone from his system, confirming the findings of his American doctors. The "three miracles" in his life were getting his life and health back from prison, meeting his wife, Karen, and the birth of their child, he said.

When Yarris got his first taste of freedom from death row at age 42, the prime of his life and more than two decades had passed him by. He was sentenced in 1983 at age 21 to die in the electric chair.

A new millennium had begun four years before and he faced a whole new world of technology -- from cell phones to laptop computers and CD/DVD players, and cars with global positioning systems and four-wheel drive.

15-year battle: Five years after the Bartram High School dropout and car thief/drug addict was sentenced to death, he read an article about a forensic science convention and the use of DNA testing in criminal cases. Prior tests sought by Yarris since 1988 had been inconclusive. At the time of his conviction in July 1982, such forensic DNA technology wasn't available in the criminal justice system. It took him 15 years, but in July 2003 those test results finally exonerated him.

Testing by noted forensic scientist Dr. Edward Blake of California determined that Yarris' genetic material wasn't found on the gloves found in Linda May Craig's car, among the sperm on the victim's underwear or under her fingernails. However, Blake reported that the DNA of two unknown men was found on the underpants -- eventually leading a federal judge to order a retrial for Yarris. The Delaware County District Attorney's office didn't have enough evidence to go to trial again; Craig's murder remains unsolved.

Six months after his release, Yarris appeared outside the Media Courthouse with a bullhorn and fliers demanding that the DNA evidence from the two unknown men at the crime scene be submitted to the FBI national data bank, or CODIS. The D.A.'s office refuted Yarris' claims about any delay and said the genetic profile of unknown male No. 1 was accepted by CODIS. To date, no DNA "hit" on an individual has been released by authorities.

Yarris has yet to receive one cent in compensation for the years he spent in prison for a murder he didn't commit. Pennsylvania, unlike several states and the federal government, has no law guaranteeing compensation for unjust incarceration after wrongful conviction.

In August 2004, he filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Delaware County authorities seeking $22 million in compensation for the time he spent on death row. His attorney, John "Jack" W. Beavers of Philadelphia, said they are awaiting a decision from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals on the county's position that prosecutors and detectives have official immunity in their duties.

During his recent visit to his parents' home, Yarris invited former death-row convict Harold Wilson of Philadelphia, with whom he served behind bars in Huntington and Greene County, to meet his daughter and wife. "How many people would imagine a death-row inmate having a child that another death-row prisoner would hold after they both had spent 15 years together on death row?" Yarris said.

Acquitted through DNA evidence more than 16 years after his conviction in three murders, Wilson became the sixth Pennsylvania death-row inmate to be freed since 1982 and the nation's 122nd person freed from death row, according to the DPIC in Washington, D.C. "I'm trying to help him deal with survivor's guilt because he said to me at one point, `why are we allowed to live while they're killing other innocent men?'" Yarris said. "And some of those innocent men are friends we lived with in hell.

"I begged Gov. (Ed) Rendell to impose a (death-penalty) moratorium two years ago after I was released," Yarris said. The governor did not act on Yarris' request. "When a death-row prisoner is released and nothing happens, you expect some major change to happen," he said. "And when it doesn't happen, it's deflating. "Every time an airliner crashes, there's an investigation, but when a death-row prisoner is set free and proven innocent, they just ignore it," he said.

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