(The following remarks were given by Ajay Dev at the Vanguard 20th Anniversary Event – Sunday, June 14 in Suisun at the Wednesday Club)
Good afternoon, everyone.
First, happy twentieth anniversary to the Davis Vanguard.
Twenty years of asking difficult questions.
Twenty years of holding powerful institutions accountable.
Twenty years of giving a voice to people who might otherwise never be heard – or might simply be forgotten.
I am deeply honored to stand before you today.
I must admit that I am a little nervous.
For sixteen years, most of my public speaking was done through letters written from prison. There was no microphone, no audience sitting in front of me, and certainly no applause.
So, if I speak too slowly, become emotional, or lose my place, please be patient with me.
After all, I survived sixteen years in prison, a 378-year sentence, and thousands upon thousands of pages of legal documents.
Surely, I should be able to survive twenty minutes behind this microphone.
But seriously, standing here today means more to me than words can adequately express.
A little more than one year ago, I was still living behind prison walls.
Today, I am standing here as a free man.
I can hug my children.
I can sit with my parents.
I can have dinner with my family.
I can walk outside and look at the sky without bars or razor wire above me.
These may sound like ordinary things.
But when ordinary things have been taken away from you for sixteen years, they no longer feel ordinary.
They feel sacred.
For sixteen years, I woke up every morning knowing that I was an innocent man imprisoned for crimes I did not commit.
I learned that it can be frighteningly easy to put a human being in prison, but unbelievably difficult to get an innocent person out.
It can take a jury only a short time to return a verdict.
But correcting a wrongful conviction can take years—sometimes decades, takes enormous sacrifices, extraordinary legal work, and the courage of many people who refuse to give up.
During those years, the world keeps moving.
Children grow up.
Parents grow older.
Birthdays come and go.
Graduations happen.
Families change.
Life outside moves forward while the person inside feels frozen in time.
In one of my prison letters, I wrote that life from where I stood felt as though it had been placed on hold while everyone else’s life was moving on fast-forward.
That was exactly how it felt.
The most painful part of prison was not the concrete walls.
It was not the steel doors or razor wires,
It was not the food—although I can assure you that if my mother’s cooking deserves five stars, prison food has not earned enough stars to create a rating.
As bad as it was, it was not even the false accusation or wrongful conviction.
The greatest pain was losing my fatherhood.
My older son, Kishan, was only fifteen months old when I was taken from him.
My younger son, Jahnu, was born while I was already imprisoned.
For almost eight years, I was not permitted to hold either of my children.
I could see them through thick glass.
I could speak with them on the telephone.
But I could not hug them.
I could not tuck them into bed.
I could not take them to school, teach them soccer, comfort them when they were frightened, or simply be present when they needed their father.
Kishan and Jahnu, would you please stand?
These are my two sons. They are now 16 and 18, and both have towered over me and have their driver license.
They are not merely part of my story.
They are the reason I survived it.
They are the true innocent victims of what happened to our family.
My sons, when the darkness became almost unbearable, you gave me purpose.
Whenever I felt I could not continue fighting, I thought of you.
I told myself that giving up on my own life would also mean giving up on both of you.
And I could never do that.
You gave me strength.
You gave me courage.
You gave me hope.
You saved me more than you will ever fully know.
Every breath of freedom I take today, I take for us.
I love you both with all my heart.
I also want to recognize their mother, Peggy.
Although Peggy and I are divorced, I want to speak today with honesty, respect, and gratitude.
Peggy was forced to carry burdens that no mother should have been required to carry.
She raised our two young boys while dealing with the emotional, financial, and practical consequences of my case.
She drove long distances to bring them for prison visits. She kept me informed about their schools, their activities, their struggles, and their lives. She understood that my sons were the reason I was surviving.
Peggy, thank you for your sacrifice, your patience, and for raising Kishan and Jahnu into the wonderful young men they are becoming.
Regardless of where life has taken us, I will always remain deeply grateful to you.
I also want to honor my parents.
Yesterday was my parents 64th year anniversary.
My mother covered me with unconditional love. She listened when I needed to speak, allowed me to release my pain, and never permitted a conviction to change what she knew in her heart about her son.
My father lifted me through prayer, faith, strength, and guidance.
They watched their son suffer for sixteen years, knowing that they could not simply open the prison doors and bring me home.
Yet they never stopped praying.
They never stopped loving me.
They never stopped believing that truth would one day find its way into the light.
Mom and Dad, my freedom carries your prayers within it.
From the deepest core of my heart, I give you my love, my respect, and my lifelong devotion.
My brother Sanjay gave more than I could ever repay. He handled the things I could not handle from prison and worked tirelessly for my freedom.
My sister-in-law Patty refused to let my story disappear. She contacted reporters, communicated with attorneys, organized supporters, and remained one of the strongest public voices for my innocence.
My family, friends, supporters, and advocates wrote letters, visited me in prison, attended rallies, studied documents, prayed for me, and spoke when remaining silent would have been much easier.
You were not simply my supporters.
You were the heartbeat that kept my case alive.
And that brings me to the Davis Vanguard—and to the man behind it, David Greenwald.
David, you and I had never spoken or met until 2017, eight years after I was already wrongfully imprisoned.
When my family first approached you in 2009, after my incarceration, you did not immediately accept everything they said.
You were skeptical.
And honestly, that is exactly what an investigative journalist should be.
You asked questions.
You examined the court records.
You studied the evidence.
You interviewed people.
You listened to different points of view.
You allowed the general public to comment—some believed in me, some doubted me, and some asked difficult questions.
That public discussion was not always easy for my family or for me.
But the truth should not be afraid of honest questions.
The truth becomes stronger when it survives careful examination.
That is the importance of investigative journalism.
Too often, the first version of a criminal case comes from law enforcement or the prosecution.
An accusation becomes a headline.
The headline becomes public belief.
The conviction becomes permanent history.
Then the courtroom closes, the news moves on, and the person sent to prison slowly disappears from public memory.
A genuine investigative journalist does not begin by asking, “How do I confirm what the government has already said?”
A genuine investigative journalist asks, “What actually happened?”
David, you continued asking that question for sixteen years.
You wrote about the mistranslated pretext telephone call.
You reported on the evidence the jury never heard.
You covered the rallies, the appeals, the habeas hearings, the delays, the setbacks, and finally Honorable Judge Beronio’s ruling.
You did not ask the public to blindly believe that I was innocent.
You gave people information and encouraged them to examine it for themselves.
That distinction meant everything to me.
Inside prison, we had no internet, no computers, no social media.
For years, I used an old typewriter with no memory. One mistake could mean retyping an entire page.
Today, my smartphone remembers everything for me—except the password I need to open it.
While I was confined behind prison walls, the Vanguard kept information about my case before the public.
Each article reminded me that my name had not completely become only a prison number.
Each public discussion reminded me that people outside were still asking questions.
Every time the truth was examined, it gave me hope.
David, in one of my public letters, I called you “a voice in the wilderness crying out for justice on my behalf.”
I meant it then.
I mean it even more today.
You did not carry the legal arguments into court, but you helped keep my story alive long enough for the courts to finally hear it.
You did not allow me to be forgotten.
In that very real sense, you contributed to my freedom.
Thank you, David.
Thank you to the Davis Vanguard.
Today, I also have the honor of recognizing the attorney who entered one of the most difficult chapters of my case and fought with extraordinary courage and determination – my attorney, Jennifer Mouzis.
Jennifer did not inherit an easy case.
The records were enormous. The evidentiary hearing was complicated. There had been changing attorneys, overseas witnesses, disputed translations, years of delay, and a State determined to defend the conviction.
She could have seen me as another file, another prisoner, or another impossible case.
She did not.
She saw a human being.
She listened.
She studied.
She challenged.
She prepared.
She fought. She fought for me with courage, intelligence, and extraordinary determination.
Jennifer, whenever you stood in court, you carried more than legal arguments.
You carried the hopes of my children.
You carried the prayers of my parents.
You carried the sacrifices of my family.
You carried the life of a man who had already lost sixteen years.
On May 16, 2025, Honorable Judge Janene Beronio granted my habeas petition and vacated my conviction and sentence.
One week later, on May 23, I walked out of custody on OR.
There are no words that can fully describe the first breath of freedom after sixteen years.
The air felt different.
The sky looked different.
Even standing in a parking lot felt beautiful.
Jennifer, you did not simply help win a legal ruling.
You helped return a father to his sons.
You helped return a son to his aging parents.
You helped restore a human life.
No award can fully measure what your work means to me.
From the deepest core of my heart, thank you.
Coming home did not suddenly erase sixteen years of pain.
Freedom and healing are not the same thing.
Walking through the prison gate was the beginning of freedom, but healing will take time.
I am rebuilding relationships, rediscovering ordinary life, creating new memories with my sons, learning how to live in a world that changed while I was gone.
I am also learning that even after the prison door opens, part of the prison can remain inside the mind.
But I do not want the rest of my life to be controlled by anger or hatred.
I once wrote that I wanted to practice unilateral forgiveness—one-sided forgiveness, even when those who harmed me never asked to be forgiven.
Forgiveness does not mean forgetting.
It does not mean abandoning accountability.
It means refusing to allow hatred to become another prison.
I hold no hatred toward the person who accused me. I pray that she finds peace.
Anger and hatred consume the soul while forgiveness gives the heart room to breathe.
My parents taught me compassion, and I am trying my best to follow that path.
Sixteen years taught me that hope does not always arrive as something large or dramatic.
Sometimes hope is a handwritten letter.
Sometimes it is a prison visit.
Sometimes it is a mother praying.
Sometimes it is an attorney who refuses to surrender.
Sometimes it is an investigative journalist asking one more question.
Sometimes it is two young boys telling their father, “We are waiting for you to come home Dad.”
And sometimes hope is an entire community deciding that one person’s injustice matters to all of us.
My freedom is not mine alone.
It is the victory of a village that carried me when I could no longer carry myself.
That is why the work of the Davis Vanguard matters.
Independent journalism is not merely about publishing stories.
It is about ensuring that power does not become the sole author of history.
It is about remembering the human being behind a case number.
It is about refusing to allow people to disappear.
For twenty years, the Davis Vanguard has done that work.
Today, I ask all of you to help make certain it continues.
Support investigative journalism. Support Davis Vanguard.
Support attorneys who fight for people society has already judged.
Support families carrying burdens the public may never see.
And whenever you encounter injustice, do not assume that someone else will speak.
Be that someone.
Because one voice can keep a story alive.
One story can awaken a community.
One community can move the legal system.
And truth, when pursued with courage, persistence, and love, can eventually open even the strongest prison door.
I am a living example. My journey took me from a 378-year sentence to standing here today as a free man.
I am looking at my sons.
I am honoring my parents and family.
I am thanking the attorney who fought to bring me home.
And I am celebrating the journalist and organization that refused to let my story die.
This is a moment I once could only dream about from inside a prison cell.
Today, it is real.
And yes—it makes my heart smile.
To Jennifer, David, the Davis Vanguard, my family, my friends, and every person who stood beside me:
You reminded me that I was not forgotten.
You kept hope alive.
You helped bring me home.
I will carry that gratitude for the rest of my life.
Happy twentieth anniversary to the Davis Vanguard.
May the next twenty years bring more truth into the light, more accountability to those who hold power, and more hope and freedom to those who are still waiting for someone to hear their voice.
Thank you—from the deepest core of my heart.
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