After 34 years behind bars 61-year-old Reginald Adams is enjoying doing things his way.
“I eat a decent breakfast now. I watch movies of my choice so I can’t complain right now. All that comes with the price of freedom,” says Adams.
Adams who was wrongfully convicted of murder says his desires are pretty simple.
“One was an oyster loaf. The other was a Harley Davidson motorcycle, which I intend to get sooner or later anyways,” says Adams, “Other than that I don’t have no other wishes, but to stay with my mother and my sisters and be the whole family again because I was the only piece of the puzzle that was missing.”
Adams was released on Monday. District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro calls his case “Intentional misconduct on the part of police and prosecutors.”
“I offer the apology both personally and on behalf of a much different sort of district attorney’s office than the office that prosecuted him nearly three decades ago,” says Cannizzaro.
It’s an apology Adams accepts, but tonight his focus is elsewhere. Tonight Reginald Adams will mix and mingle with other exonerees and with the men and women of The Innocence Project of New Orleans, a team that has freed 24 wrongly convicted prisoners from Louisiana and Mississippi.
Attorney Caroline Milne with the Innocence Project of New Orleans says, “It’s always nice to be able to see them in regular clothes, and see them out in the world, and learn who they are on the outside and learn who they really are which is not the person who is behind bars.”