"They send you here for life, that's exactly what they're taking. The part that counts, anyway." Shawshank Redemption

This Is NOT Natural Life!
Adam Gray, age 14, sentenced to natural life without the possibility of parole for a crime he did not commit.
Sign the Petition Attached
More At: www.freeadamgray.org
Adam Gray is a young man sentenced to natural life and currently an inmate at Stateville Correctional Center in Illinois. Adam Gray is innocent. There are occasions when the courts convict persons who are innocent of the crime for which they are accused.
This is one such occasion.
In March 1993 the rear portion of a 3 flat on Chicagos south side caught fire at 2:30 AM, resulting in death by smoke inhalation of the two elderly siblings residing on the top floor. All other residents had time to dress and exit the building unharmed, including two who are disabled.
On the night of the fire, a 50 year old woman living alone, looked out of her window to see smoke, looked further, and saw a male hurriedly changing clothes. She exited her home and saw her neighbor, to whom she related this. Her neighbor walked in the direction indicated, and saw the same male several doors down, rubbing his hands in the grass. Consistent with an arsonists behavior, this young man returned to the scene shortly after. Adam Grays family resided a block from these two women, witnesses who were residents and neighbors adjacent to the property burned. The second womans degree of certainty that the male she witnessed rubbing his hands in the grass was NOT Adam Gray comes from an incident in which then-13-year-old Adam was brought to her home by his older brother to clean the eggs he had thrown on her property.
This information was not discovered until now.
At the time of Adams arrest and detention, no police officer or investigator questioned these neighbors and at no time during Adams trial were these neighbors questioned. Their story remained hidden as Adam Gray experienced the hopelessness of a just-turned-14-year-old facing natural life for a crime he did not commit.
After FIVE HOURS of interrogation WITHOUT his parent being permitted in the room, a barely 14 year old Adam gave police a rehearsed statement, believing that doing so would result in his going home. These officers and the Assistant District Attorney may have believed Adam Gray to be a probable suspect -- if not the offender in this crime although there was no physical evidence to implicate Adam. In this instance, they focused their attention on an innocent young man who has, ever since, been unjustly incarcerated.
Adam Gray was found as a discretionary transfer (705 ILCS 405/5-805 (3) of the Juvenile Court Act) to criminal court, although he was barely 14, had no prior convictions and a good school record. Once in criminal court, Adam Gray was treated as an adult. Adam was detained three years before his case was brought to trial, where Adam Gray pled innocent. Absent the complete story, and observing a clearly distraught Adam in the courtroom, a jury found Adam Gray guilty of the two deaths that resulted in the fire. Adam received a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole: 730 ILCS 5/5-8-1.
The perpetrator of this crime needs to be punished. Yet, to this day, he goes unpunished. An innocent boy has been suffering in his stead, a wrongful fate of natural life imprisonment, without the possibility of parole. It has been twelve years now, and Adam Gray is 26 years old.

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