The ‘Innocent Prisoner’s Dilemma’

Ángel Franco/The New York Times
Diana Ortiz spent 18 years at the Bedford Hills prison. Robert Dennison was chairman of the Parole Board the freed her. Also shown, a portion of the transcript from one of her parole hearings.

Convicted of Murder as Teenager and Paroled at 41

By TRYMAINE LEE
NYT

DIANA ORTIZ waited in a cagelike room at the Fishkill Correctional Facility that winter morning in 2005, going over it in her head again and again. She needed to find the right words, conjure the right emotions, strike the right balance between remorse for her role in the killing of an off-duty police officer and recognition of all that she had accomplished in the 22 ½ years since.

She wanted to explain how she had blossomed behind bars, earning a high school equivalency diploma and bachelor’s and master’s degrees in prison; how she barely recognized the wispy, naïve 18-year-old who had fallen for a man twice her age, become addicted to drugs and posed as a prostitute to set up a robbery that turned deadly.

Convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 17 years to life in prison, Ms. Ortiz had been in the same situation, prepping for a parole hearing — four times before. She knew she would have about 10 minutes to make her case to three strangers who knew little of where she had been but controlled everything about where she would go. Each previous time she had been nervous and flushed with remorse and regret. Each time, parole had been denied.

“I felt it doesn’t matter what I say, it doesn’t matter who I am or what I’ve done,” she recalled thinking. “It’s never going to change; the crime will never change.”

(Continued here.)