By Asia Foster
I wholeheartedly believed that my life was over at twenty-one. Growing up, I was told that you hit the lowest part of your life by either two ways: jail or death. Unfortunately, I hit the lowest part of my life and ended up in jail for a crime I did not commit. At that point, not only did I feel worthless, but I also felt a huge amount of helplessness. When a person comes into jail they are automatically deemed to be a liar, thief, and criminal. So I bore that label as soon as I received my inmate identification number in booking. There is no way around the truth in the matter; inmates are “guilty until proven innocent.” Every single time another inmate or jail 
staff worker asked me what I was incarcerated for I responded “I’m innocent.” They would give me the craziest look in return and respond with extremely hateful and crude remarks. It was inevitable to not be believed and nearly impossible to convince anyone otherwise.
Due to the financial scrabble during the time I was charged, my family and I had little to no funds to hire effective counsel to represent me in the biggest fight of my life. Like typical public defenders, the one assigned to me continuously pushed for me to take a plea deal instead of going to trial. My public defender had zero experience in arguing violent crimes, yet the commonwealth’s office managed to continue to assign her to individuals with very violent charges/crimes. She had no voice for me when my voice was also gone. She had no defense prepared for me. My fight was over before it started. I knew at that moment I lost the battle. My freedom, reputation, confidence and other important values were in complete shambles. I signed the plea and cried until my eyes swelled.
Statistics show approximately 94% of inmates incarcerated in local state jails and correctional institutions take a plea agreement rather than taking their cases to a trial by judge or jury. Around 56% of those inmates are factually innocent of the crime accused. These numbers will only continue to climb higher as the years pass on because of the following reasons: inmates like myself coerced into signing plea deals, public defenders giving up on their clients, lost hope, the inability to afford good attorneys who are ready and willing to fight for their clients’ freedom and the state not wanting to take a case to trial because of the risk of overspending.
Now how do we live in America where justice and equality “supposedly” exist when it clearly does not? How are those that are wrongfully incarcerated supposed to remain silent when they have done no criminal act? How is this considered right when it is so far from it? What a country we call home.
