Excerpt
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): On any given afternoon in Braddock Pennsylvania on the outskirts of Pittsburgh you’ll find Drew Whitley in Stambolis Meat Shop helping to clean up. It’s about all he can do now. He takes valium for an anxiety that is very real for him.
What’s your life been like?
DREW WHITLEY: Some days I wake up with nightmares from the night before. You know I st ill have nightmares that I’m locked up. If they locked you up for getting life without parole for somethin’ you– for something they know you didn’t do, ain’t no tellin’ what they might do, far as I’m concerned.
HARI SREENIVASAN: So you are still living in fear of the justice system?
DREW WHITLEY: Oh, yes. I think I’ll be that way for the rest of my life.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Whitley’s fear and anxiety are based on fact. In 1989, Whitley, who had two previous convictions for theft and receiving stolen property, was convicted in the high profile murder of Noreen Malloy, a 22-year-old McDonald’s manager in Duquesne, Pennsylvania, another town near Pittsburgh. Although he always maintained his innocence.
DREW WHITLEY: I’m hoping the judge will grant the DNA test so the whole city of Pittsburgh can see that they got another innocent man.
HARI SREENIVASAN: He served 18 years in prison before DNA testing proved that hairs found in the killer’s ski mask did not belong to him. In 2006, he was set free.
Eight years later, Drew Whitley’s exonerated life is anything but easy. He gets a disability check for $700 a month. Just last year at age 58 he moved out of his mother’s home into a tiny two room apartment which costs him nearly half his check.
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