January 15, 2013

Restoring Lives by Proclaiming Justice

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By: Charles Jason Baldwin

After having spent more than 50 percent of my life in prison for a crime I did not commit, suffering the added insult to injury of being offered only an Alford Plea in return, and worst of all seeing six families torn apart by the undeserved grief of losing their sons, I know all too well how easily justice can be lost. Injustice is not something that can be defeated to the point to where we can at last say we can now live free from the fear of it ever returning again. No, injustice will never be eradicated. Whatever its cause or form, it will forever be with us.

But we are not helpless. Every day I thank God that there have been people who recognized the injustice done in my case and cared enough to do whatever was in their power to correct it. If not for the efforts of so many, I believe Damien Echols would have been executed and Jessie and myself left to die, forgotten and alone. From that gratitude, a calling has been birthed in me–a calling to help others as I have been helped.

When our executive director John Hardin approached me about co-founding this organization with him, I knew it was a major opportunity to fulfilI that calling. I have met many wondrous and courageous people over the years, one of which is John. I am still in the process of getting to know him, but what I’ve learned thus far is that he is a man with vision, energy and integrity. Moreover, he cares about justice and about helping the hopeless to find hope.

With Proclaim Justice and the dedicated, knowledgeable, hard-working core of people who make up the heart of this organization, I believe we can make a very real difference in the lives of the condemned innocent, their families and communities, and the countless others who are affected when innocence seems lost.

Charles Jason Baldwin served more than 18 years of a life without parole sentence and faced down the State of Arkansas’s threats of seeking the death penalty for him with dignity, honor and grace for crimes for which he is completely, actually and factually innocent. To this very day as co-founder and vice president of Proclaim Justice, he seeks the identity of the murderer(s) of Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Steve Branch.