The news since yesterday tells the story: Yet another DNA exoneration in Texas. That’s forty-one since 2001. Forty-one people who went to prison, even though they were innocent. Forty-one people who believed the system worked and would save them.

I’d like to ask you to do something with me: for one minute, I want you to sit there and think of what it would be like to be one of those forty-one people. Imagine being Cornelius Dupree Jr, who was just exonerated — less than a week after he made parole, thirty years after being convicted for a crime he knew he did not commit.

You don’t have to do what he did. You don’t have to serve the actual thirty years. You don’t have to actually experience what it was like. Just take one minute and try to imagine what it was like to be Mr. Dupree.

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