'I Spent 38 Years in Prison for a Crime I Didn't Commit'

The day I was arrested it felt like the whole world had caved in on me. I'd read about these kinds of tragedies before; these acts of fate. The person standing on the corner, catching the transit bus, who gets shot and killed by a stray bullet. I wondered, was I one of those people? One of those people you read about and think: "It's sad that person lost their life." Would I be someone who was condemned to die in prison?

On June 19, 1983, I spent the evening at a party in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles. I was living in Pittsburgh, selling clothes for a living, but a friend had invited me to spend some time with her in California. That weekend, we walked on the beach, went to the Hard Rock Cafe to eat and went to a party. We had a wonderful time; that was that.

During the trip, I received a call from a friend. He believed one of my automobiles may have been stolen. I was concerned and wanted to make some calls to Pittsburgh, but it was too expensive to make those calls outright.

Another friend of mine gave me two calling card numbers; one didn't work, but the other did. I didn't know where the number had come from, but I used it to make several calls to Pittsburgh from June 21.

When I got back to Pittsburgh, my mom was worried. "Have you been using some number to call the house?" she asked. I told her I had. "Well stop, because the homicide police came looking for whoever is using that card."

I had no idea at the time, but that number belonged to a woman who had been robbed, murdered and sexually assaulted in Inglewood, California, on June 19, 1983.

Immediately I stopped using the number, but by then there was a paper trail linking me to this crime. In October 1984, I was arrested and charged with capital murder, robbery, and attempted murder.

What followed, in my opinion, was poor police work and a rush from the district attorney to get a conviction. The majority of the evidence presented at my trial was circumstantial, and there was no physical evidence linking me to the crime. It felt as though they were modifying evidence to fit me.

In 1986, I went to trial for the first time. I was facing the death penalty. Initially, I had a hung jury. The second time around, in 1988, they found me guilty, but sentenced me to life in prison without parole.

The moment I was found guilty I didn't know how to feel. I can't describe what it's like to be sitting in a courtroom and hear people cheering at my verdict. They were cheering that my life had been condemned; the judge had to tell them to calm down.

My case was called "The People of the State of California v. Maurice Hastings," and I felt that. It felt like the whole world was against me, that they were using the power of the people to convict me of something I didn't do.

My first night in prison was bad. I felt like just giving up. After the trial, a couple of newspaper articles were written about me and some of the guys who had been keeping track of my case saved them for me. I didn't want to look at them; the man in those pictures looked so dejected.

What kept me going was praying—and because if I gave up, what would happen to me? What would I become? Sometimes I felt like one day they would discover the truth. Sometimes there was a glimmer of hope I would hold on to. But other times I felt hopeless, and that could go on for weeks at a time.

Throughout my time in prison, I didn't engage in alcohol or drugs. I exercised a lot which helped reduce the stress. I never really told anyone what I was incarcerated for, but I tried to surround myself with people who had hope; people who talked about their faith and how things might change one day.

During the early 1990s, I went through the appeal process, which failed. Around the same time, forensic analysis was becoming increasingly used to solve criminal cases, and so I began writing letters asking for DNA that had been found on the victim to be tested. I was told that all evidence in my case was destroyed.

In 2000, I petitioned to courts for the last time to test the DNA, and was told once again that there was nothing left. At the time I hoped that they were lying, that it hadn't been destroyed, but there was always some doubt. So then I was asking, where is my hope coming from now?

I would fantasize about the person who did it coming forward; I hoped God would touch their heart and they would confess—all sorts of things crossed my mind. But after a while, when these things didn't happen, I just moved on to a point. I thought: "Maybe I am supposed to serve God in prison, maybe that is my fate."

As you get older in prison you see younger guys coming in and feel you have to set an example. I always acted as a mentor and told them to be hopeful, even when they felt as though they were destined for a life in prison.

During my 38 years in prison, I received a formal education, including my General Educational Development and high school diploma, but my mindset was focused on being the best person I possibly could be while in prison. After a while, I started to become hopeful I might be released again, but it went back and forth constantly.

I had sought assistance from many different organizations to prove my innocence over the years. I began working with Paula Mitchell, who at the time was director of the Project for the Innocent at Loyola Law School and later founded the Los Angeles Innocence Project, in 2022.

As the result of work carried out by these organizations, and the California Forensic Science Institute, the district attorney's office found that this DNA evidence had, in fact, not been destroyed, and last year were able to send them to an independent laboratory for testing. They found the DNA profile of a male contributor who was clearly not me.

When Paula called me to tell me the news it was a little unreal. After so many years, this process had happened so quickly. Was this real? Was I really going to have the chance for my freedom back? I had raised my hopes and lost them so many times, it almost felt like the boy who cried wolf.

After being released from prison, on October 20, 2022, it took a long time for it to sink in that what was happening was real. I had been locked down in one location for almost four decades and then all of a sudden, within one day, I was free.

When you've spent almost 40 years living in one place where someone decides what you eat, where you go, what you do and when you do it, it's hard to process being away from that. Everything out here seems a little bit broader, and it's hard to jump into it all of a sudden. You have to readjust all over again.

I believe the criminal justice system needs to have more sincere people in positions of power. People with integrity and ethics; people who aren't just trying to climb up the ladder.

I think leaders in this field should be teaching their colleagues that they're looking for the truth. In my opinion, they shouldn't be trying to modify evidence because they think a certain person may be guilty of a crime.

It takes one person at a time. I don't believe everybody is going to come together collectively to beat corruption. It takes one person at a time, with the right heart, to say: "Enough is enough."

Maurice Hastings, 69, was freed on October 20, 2022 after being wrongfully imprisoned for 38 years. You can find out more about the Los Angeles Innocence Project here.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

As told to Newsweek's My Turn associate editor, Monica Greep.

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