Nick Yarris
Nicholas James Yarris is an American writer and storyteller who spent 22 years on death row in Pennsylvania after being wrongfully convicted of rape and murder. He was exonerated by DNA testing in 2003 and released in 2004.
Prosecution, conviction, and exoneration
Although disputed by some family members, Yarris has stated he was the victim of sexual abuse as a child at the hands of another youth, which led him into addiction to alcohol, drugs and the commission of petty crime in his teens. On December 21, 1981, Yarris and a friend stole a car. Yarris, then age 20, was blasting music while driving under the influence when he was stopped by police in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.The officer and Yarris got into a physical confrontation, and the policeman's gun discharged. Yarris was charged with the kidnapping and attempted murder of a police officer. He was later tried and acquitted of those charges.
While in jail, facing a possible sentence of life in prison, he spotted a newspaper article about the December 16, 1981, murder and rape of Linda Mae Craig, who had been abducted from a Delaware shopping center but whose body had been found in Pennsylvania. Her true murderer is still unknown. In an effort to win favor with the authorities and avoid the consequences of his pending charges, Yarris claimed that he knew who had committed the unsolved rape-murder. When the man he named, whom he had wrongly believed to be recently deceased, proved upon investigation to be plainly uninvolved, Yarris became the number-one suspect.
Yarris was then charged with the abduction, rape and murder of Craig. After a short jury trial, Yarris was found guilty. In July 1982, at age 21, he was sentenced to death. Yarris escaped from custody while being transported to a post-sentence hearing, but was arrested in Florida about a month later, where he identified himself. Florida authorities agreed to return him to Pennsylvania's death row. Numerous appeals and post-conviction challenges proved unavailing. During his time in prison, Yarris taught himself to read, married a prison volunteer visitor, and became the first death row prisoner to seek DNA testing. In 2003, with the aid of a team of court-appointed lawyers, a third round of DNA testing, some of it on previously undisclosed physical evidence, proved that two unidentified men, not Yarris, had committed the crime. In January 2004, after resolving the escape-related charges, he was released.
Post-exoneration activities, lawsuit, and personal life
Following his exoneration and release, Yarris protested once a week outside the District Attorney's Office, demanding that the DNA samples be submitted to the FBI database to find Craig's real rapists and killers. Yarris sued the Delaware County District Attorney's Office in federal court for malicious prosecution, and the case eventually settled for $4 million in 2008.In 2005, Yarris moved to the UK, where he worked with Reprieve, married and had a daughter. Following a second divorce, he married his third wife, also from the UK. The couple then moved back to the United States. Following another divorce, Yarris returned to the UK and married for a fourth time, moving from Somerset to Oregon. The couple separated in February 2021.