John Merritt has been behind bars for longer than I’ve been alive. Like many of the men and women we speak to, John’s early life was marked by run-ins with the law—mostly for petty, non-violent offences.
He became trapped in a cycle, moving in and out of the system. One day everything took an even darker turn while he was serving a sentence for burglary.
A visit from a sheriff's investigator would change the course of his life forever, setting him on an unexpected and terrifying path toward the death penalty for a crime, he says, he didn't commit.
Ultimately John would have to make a decision, a life of incarceration or the electric chair.
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