Jarrett Adams: From Defendant to Defender — Transcript

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1. 0:01so i'm 17 years old me and two friends
2. 0:05we go to a party in wisconsin and we are
3. 0:07falsely accused of a sexual assault it
4. 0:10was a consensual encounter and you know
5. 0:13we
6. 0:14thought that the justice system would be
7. 0:16just we thought that it would be fair
8. 0:19and we realized that
9. 0:21you don't get the presumption of
10. 0:22innocence
11. 0:24no matter what they say
12. 0:30ended up being sentenced to serve 28
13. 0:31years in prison
14. 0:35i served almost 10 years in prison
15. 0:38before the wisconsin innocence project
16. 0:40answered a letter filed a habeas
17. 0:43petition on my behalf
18. 0:45and the seventh circuit court of appeals
19. 0:46unanimously reversed my conviction and i
20. 0:50was
21. 0:51free
22. 0:55[Music]
23. 0:58it was a decade lost
24. 1:00but you know i refused to to let the
25. 1:02decade
26. 1:04be lost for nothing
27. 1:06so i decided to go on a journey to
28. 1:08become a lawyer
29. 1:10and i had the support of
30. 1:12the community as well as the legal
31. 1:14community and the relationships that i
32. 1:16built with none other than keith finley
33. 1:18you know who's also a co-founder of sifs
34. 1:22so i made my way through law school
35. 1:24associate's degree
36. 1:26bachelor's degree
37. 1:27law degree and i clerked in the same
38. 1:30seventh circuit court of appeals that
39. 1:32overturned my conviction
40. 1:33i went on to go work with the innocence
41. 1:35project in new york for about two years
42. 1:38we took a case in wisconsin
43. 1:41and we were
44. 1:43a part of a team that exonerated uh
45. 1:46richard buranik and my co-counsel was
46. 1:49none other than
47. 1:50keith finley
48. 1:51the guy who argued and got me out almost
49. 1:5410 years to the month that we were
50. 1:57in court
51. 1:58exonerating another person
52. 2:00i just realized
53. 2:01there were a lot of jared adams they
54. 2:04didn't have you know a lot of the
55. 2:05resources
56. 2:07a lot of the great fortune that i was
57. 2:09able to get when you don't have the
58. 2:11innocence project take my case so i just
59. 2:13started to go on to arm myself to be
60. 2:16best equipped to
61. 2:18help with any reform in the criminal
62. 2:20justice system that i could contribute
63. 2:22to