Your saying to yourself who is this guy? Why is his story so important.
Trust me after you watch this you will know who this man is for the rest of your life. He didn't win any championships or have a shoe named after him. But he has one thing most of us don't, a positive attitude about life everyday. His outlook on life is something we could all learn from.
Dewey Bozella, freed in 2009 after his conviction for a 1977 murder in the City of Poughkeepsie was overturned, Bozella spent most of his 26 years behind bars at the Ossining prison and was involved in the boxing program there. He received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award tonight at ESPN’s Espy Awards in Los Angeles.
For many years after he was first suspected of murder in 1977, it was hard for Dewey to talk about it. Murder is actually a kind way of describing what happened.
Watch the piece after the Jump...
Dewey was suspected of murdering a 92-year-old woman. There were no fingerprints of Dewey's at the scene of the crime. In fact, there was no physical evidence at all to suggest he had ever entered the home. But Dewey was arrested. If prosecutors were looking for a suspect with a troubled past, they certainly had a good candidate. When he was 9 years old, Dewey saw his father batter his pregnant mother. His mother died from the beating, and his father ran away and never came back. Dewey and his nine siblings grew up in a series of foster homes.
In 1983, six years after the murder, two inmates told prosecutors that it was Dewey who'd murdered the old woman. They lied because it enabled them to cut deals that would get them released. The brother of one of those inmates also pointed a finger at Dewey for support. In 1983, Dewey was charged with murder.
Dewey was sent to Sing Sing. He had a right to be bitter, and he was. The hardest part was he had to stuff his bitterness inside. There was no way to let it out. Ask him what he was in for, and he refused to say.
Dewey Rader Bozella had learned one thing by the time he returned to prison. He could find himself in a terrible situation, or he could simply find himself.
He punched all of his bitterness into the heavy bag and taught himself to smile. He earned a bachelor's degree from Mercy College. Then a master's from New York Theological Seminary. He became a model prisoner. He met an inmate who had murdered his older brother. But Dewey forgave him. He proposed to a woman named Trena whom he met while she was visiting another inmate. Not only did Trena say yes to the proposal months after they'd met; her father said yes.
They were married. Prison guards wrote letters recommending that Dewey be released on parole. Four times parole hearings came up.
His application should've sailed through with a rubber stamp. There was one problem. A simple step in the procedure called for Dewey to appreciate the nature and seriousness of the crime. In his case, that meant admitting that he'd stuffed 5 feet of cloth down the throat of a 92-year-old woman. Dewey's decision was final. He'd rather die in prison than say those words and go free. Each time, his application for parole was turned down.
One rejection burned so badly that he felt he needed to be placed in solitary confinement. That way, the bitterness boiling inside him would not touch anyone around him. There is no way to request solitary confinement. But Dewey knew how to get there. He howled until he was thrown into the hole.
He wrote the Innocence Project every week for years. The organization uses DNA evidence to exonerate those wrongfully convicted. The Innocence Project finally accepted his case. Then had to drop it because all the physical evidence had been destroyed. Dewey seemed out of options, but his perseverance paid off. The legal firm of WilmerHale was alerted and jumped in to help pro bono. The lawyers tracked down the arresting officer, who had since retired. After 22 years on the job, the officer took home only one file: the case of Dewey Rader Bozella. Something just didn't smell right about it.
The lawyers quickly found that evidence had been withheld during the trials. They put in nearly a million dollars' worth of work and found evidence that proved Dewey had nothing to do with the murder and that another suspect had confessed to the crime.
In 2009, 26 years after first being sent to Sing Sing, the chains were taken off Dewey in a courtroom and he was set free. He was 50 years old.
He had never even had a chance to learn to drive. But he started his new life with a smile. He got a job in Newburgh assisting people recently released from prison. After work, he'd walk across the street to a boxing gym where he could hit the heavy bag and train young fighters. The gym was the one place where he could keep fighting off what haunted him the most.
Bozella intends to spend the rest of his life helping teenagers avoid the fate that befell him.
He was jailed because he'd put himself in the position to be jailed. He was jailed because as a teen he'd been out running the streets. He didn't want to see another kid in the same position. A part of Dewey longed to have one professional fight, yes. But helping get kids off the streets and into the gym was where he found peace.
Then the bills at the gym couldn't be paid and its doors were shut. Now, Dewey wants to open a gym with his own unique name on it. And maybe he'll be able to have that opportunity now that millions of people will get to know who he really is. They'll get to know Dewey Rader Bozella when he receives the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage at The ESPYs on July 13.
It's impossible to know how promising the future is for Dewey, now that he can finally speak.
Please Leave A Comment-
Source-ESPN
Comments