INTRODUCTION
Recipient of the 2013 The Media for a Just Society (MJS) Award presented by the National Council on Crime & Delinquency.
Once a murderer, always a murderer? Or can a murderer be redeemed? Who do they really become after they have served decades in prison? What does it take for a killer to be accepted back into society? What is the chance that he will kill again?
Award-winning journalist Nancy Mullane found herself facing these questions when she accepted an assignment to report on the exploding costs of incarceration. But the men she met behind the walls astonished her with their remorse, introspection, determination, and unshakable hope for freedom and forgiveness.
Life After Murder is an intimately reported, utterly compelling story of five convicted murderers sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, who discover after decades in prison that their second chance, if it comes at all, is also the challenge of a lifetime. It follows their struggle for redemption, their legal battles to make good on the state’s promise of parole, and the lives they found after so many years inside.
ED RAMIREZ
Conviction, 1982:
Second-degree murder.
Sentence:
Fifteen years to life with the possibility of parole.
Parole reversed by
Governor Gray Davis.
DON CRONK
Conviction, 1984:
First-degree murder.
Sentence:
Twenty-five years to life with the possibility of parole.
Parole reversed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
JESSE REED
Conviction, 1985:
First-degree murder.
Sentence:
Twenty-seven years to life with the possibility of parole.
Parole reversed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
PHILLIP SEILER
Conviction, 1988:
Second-degree murder.
Sentence:
Seventeen years to life with the possibility of parole.
Parole reversed by Governor Gray Davis and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
RICH RAEL
Conviction, 1982:
Second-degree murder.
Sentence:
Twenty-two years to life with the possibility of parole.
Parole reversed by Governor Gray Davis.
