Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty
It didn’t matter that he was innocent. That the waitress whose restaurant he allegedly robbed identified him from a photo lineup, then recanted her testimony on the witness stand. That the prosecution offered to drop the weapons possession charge against the restaurant’s cook if he fingered him as the robber. That the judge would not allow his defense attorney to show the jury a picture of a lookalike who had recently pled guilty to a half a dozen similar robberies around the time of the one he was on trial for.
All that mattered, it seemed, was that Stephen Schulz had a criminal record, and had refused a plea deal, instead opting to prove his innocence at trial. So for the crime of standing up for himself, Schulz was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
“We talk a lot about the presumption of innocence in this country,” says Daniel S. Medwed, author of Barred: Why the Innocent Can’t Get Out of Prison, “but once you become a suspect, there is a presumption of guilt that attaches, and It’s very difficult to budge.”