A Special Speaker in Middle School: Robert Jones

 

In 1992, New Orleans resident Robert Jones was convicted of crimes he did not commit. After serving 23 years in Orleans Parish Prison and Angola Correctional Facility, he was freed by the Innocence Project and all charges were dropped. He was invited to speak to the middle school as part of 8th grader Megan Zurik’s mitzvah project – an opportunity for young people to make a positive change in the world through compassion. 

 

“It is important to make good decisions in life,” Jones shared early in his presentation, “good decisions move you forward; bad decisions move you back.” Jones shared that he was wrongfully convicted of several violent crimes in 1992, but when he went to prison, he saw people who were in there for decades and that he did not want to become like them. He decided to fight back, and he spent his time educating himself, eventually becoming a legal expert and facilitating the exoneration or early release of other inmates. But it took him a large part of his life to contact the innocence project and secure his own release. In 2015, he was finally freed, and later all charges were dropped.

 

Since his release, he has found success in business, as an author and public speaker, and in working as a New Orleans Public Defender’s client advocate. But some of his most important and fulfilling work was in creating the Free-Dem Foundation, a non-profit with a mission to “engage our youth through community-based education, mentorship, technical and Business development programs to cultivate life skills and strengthen ties with the community.” To learn more about this project, visit the Free-Dem Foundation website.