Bureaucratic Mindlessness, Freedom, and Moments Of Grace

A free man sits in his apartment afraid to go outside except to go to work.  An alleged rape victim confesses that she helped imprison the wrong man just to hide an affair.  A judge agrees to retest a DNA sample after years of hand-written pleas from jail.  My part in Sunday's NYT cover package (Free, And Then What?) was an extremely small one and had little to do with school reform, but tracking down and interviewing a dozen or so of  the more than 200 people who been exonerated by DNA evidence over the last few years was a fascinating and heart-wrenching experience.