I have mixed feelings about a story in the news recently. Nevest Coleman recently got his job back as a grounds keeper with the Chicago White Sox after being wrongly imprisoned for 23 years for a rape and murder conviction.1 While I am very happy for Coleman that he was exonerated by DNA evidence; and I am happy he has back the job he loves and is getting on with his life; I am very angry that he was convicted in the first place.
According to the Innocence Project – Chicago detectives beat Coleman and coerced a confession from him.2 I do not know all of the facts myself. But given his exoneration by the DNA evidence, I tend to believe Coleman’s account of what happened.
I do support law enforcement. In my article “Human Lives Matter!” I spoke out against the violence against law enforcement agents.3 I quoted Romans in stating that we need to respect those in authority. But with authority goes accountability. And I support truth. The Bible has a lot to say about truth. I remember thinking those rogue detectives should spend the rest of their lives in jail. They stole 23 years of Coleman’s life, and likely time from other people’s lives as well. They also stole from society. Instead of having a man employed and giving to society, society was paying to keep a man incarcerated. Furthermore, because these rogue detectives did not do their jobs, the real criminal was not apprehended for the crime – free to commit more rapes and murders – and evidently did. The costs of these “bad apples” abusing their power and not doing their jobs cannot be calculated. Then in my daily Bible reading, I read this in Deuteronomy 19: “If a malicious witness comes forward and accuses someone of a crime, then both the accuser and accused must appear before the Lord by coming to the priests and judges in office at that time. The judges must investigate the case thoroughly. If the accuser has brought false charges against his fellow Israelite, you must impose on the accuser the sentence he intended for the other person. In this way, you will purge such evil from among you.”4
Glory to God for placing in the plants, the animals, and in each of us a very complex set of instructions to make us that we call DNA. Praise be to God, who in His love and wisdom, gave us the law through Moses.
Terry Read
2. https://www.innocenceproject.org/cases/nevest-coleman/
3. https://www.whyshouldyoubelieve.com/human-lives-matter/
4. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+19&version=NLT