John,

Decades after his assassination, the power and urgency of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s message can be seen and felt everywhere in our country, including our ongoing fight to challenge the ways the criminal legal system targets Black and brown people. In the case of one of our exonerees, Gerry Thomas, Dr. King’s words served an even more intimate and lifesaving purpose: they sustained him through his own wrongful conviction. 

Gerry Thomas spent nearly 30 years in prison for a crime he never committed. Nearly two years after a Detroit woman was attacked and sexually assaulted in her car (which the assailant then stole), the victim identified Gerry as her attacker after seeing him in a Burger King. He was arrested — despite a total lack of physical evidence or eyewitness corroboration — and wrongfully convicted of assault and attempted murder. 

In prison, Gerry kept his spirits up by listening to cassette recordings of Aretha Franklin, Mahalia Jackson, and other gospel singers. He called his cassette player his “strength box” because of how deeply the music sustained him. Over time, his recording collection came to include speeches by Dr. King, whose voice he often listened to as he fell asleep. “I grew up through those days with Martin Luther King, Jr.,” Gerry said of the speeches that gave him hope through his incarceration.  

Dr. King himself was unjustly incarcerated, an experience which gave rise to the famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” a statement he began writing on the margins of a newspaper, continued on scraps of paper, and finished on a writing pad provided by his attorneys. From words written in prison to words delivered in front of the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. King’s speeches gave Gerry the hope and strength he needed during his own ordeal. Exonerated in 2020, Gerry now spends time savoring his freedom, time with his family, and resuming interests like art and leatherwork.

Today, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, please take a moment to read more about Gerry’s story and how Dr. King gave him hope through decades of wrongful conviction.

With gratitude,

The Innocence Project Team