It was a warm summer evening in June 2021, and Michael Sutton was out with friends in the Flats. His childhood friends had invited him out, friends he hadn’t seen in at least 15 years. One of them was visiting from Dallas, Texas. Sutton was ready to have a good time downtown, but his body’s reaction to being surrounded by people surprised him.“I’m shaking on the inside. I’m shaking and I’m sweating and I’m just like, ‘Why am I so nervous?’ I’m asking myself these questions,” he said, remembering that night. “But it’s just something my body is doing that I can’t explain.”About a month earlier, Sutton was released from prison after serving 15 years.He was released in May 2021 after a judge found he and another man were wrongfully convicted of attempted murder.“I’m not used to people being this close to me or people can just walk past me or me being able to walk this far without being trapped in a gate.” Kenny Phillips, Sutton’s co-defendant who was accused of the same crime in 2006, has experienced similar anxiety. “When I first came home, I was really on edge, real jumpy,” he said. He remembered going to a bar with his sister and other family members one night around the same time as Sutton’s visit to the Flats. Almost immediately, he told them he didn’t want to be there and they left.“If I feel bad vibes … feeling violent energy, it ain’t no good to be around,” Phillips said. “I gotta get out of here immediately. I’m cool. I don’t want to be around it.”Both men have since started therapy, and Sutton was prescribed sleeping pills. He had been experiencing night terrors and woke up in the middle of the night sweating after dreaming that he was still in prison. Sutton’s dreams and the anxiety in public places have since subsided. But Sutton and Phillips are still learning every day how to live in a world they were thrown into after 15 years behind bars.Studies show wrongful incarceration can take a toll on a person’s mental health. Although Phillips and Sutton’s criminal justice journey has been reported on extensively, their experience rebuilding their lives after being exonerated sheds light on the daily mental health struggles people face after incarceration. “We just get kidnapped by the system and just get released,” Sutton said. A birthday celebration ends in arrestsSutton and Phillips have known each other since childhood. Growing up a few blocks from each other in Slavic Village, they played basketball together at the YMCA and later attended South High School. The school closed in 2010 and has since been turned into a public safety training academy for Cleveland police, fire and EMS. Michael Sutton Credit: Kenyatta Crisp / for Signal ClevelandJust after midnight on May 29, 2006, Memorial Day, Sutton, Phillips and two of their friends were out in Sutton’s car, celebrating Phillips’ 18th birthday, when they witnessed a drive-by shooting near a gas station at East 55th Street and Woodland Avenue. Two people were shot in the head. They survived. As the shooter’s car sped away, police pulled over Sutton’s car and arrested all four teens. While the two friends’ cases were dismissed, Sutton and Phillips were charged with attempted murder along with several other crimes tied to the shooting. Officers Daniel Lentz and Michael Keane testified that they saw gunfire from Sutton’s car, that they saw two men had guns – and that they shot at officers during a foot chase. The young men were tried together in June 2007 and found guilty. Phillips was sentenced to 92 years and Sutton to 46 years. Sutton was sent to Mansfield Correctional Institution and Phillips went to Trumbull Correctional Institution. Eventually, Sutton was transferred to Lake Erie Correctional Institution and Phillips was moved to Mansfield. ‘We gotta keep each other uplifted’Late one night at Mansfield Correctional Institution, Sutton sat in his locked cell. He put headphones around his ears and pressed the play button on his MP3 player. “We gonna make it,” Jadakiss sang repeatedly over a violin melody. Sutton wrote the chorus lyric at the top of a page, then began a letter to Phillips.“I used to tell him, ‘We gonna make it,’” Sutton recalled. “And we can never give up, even if we gotta die trying, we can’t give up.” Their family and friends in the outside world lived their lives and over time stopped writing as often, Sutton said. Knowing that Phillips was going through what he was going through, they would check on each other through letters. Writing to each other was how they “kept each other alive” sometimes, Phillips said. “We gotta keep each other uplifted.” “And then when our case really got to kicking up, we were just so eager,” Sutton said. Their letters then included updates from their attorneys on new evidence in their case. “We used to talk about [legal] briefs and just coming home and our future.” Kenny Phillips stands outside his mother’s home in Cleveland in January. After spending 15 years in prison, Philllips was released in 2021 and exonerated in 2022. Credit: Kenyatta Crisp / for Signal ClevelandNew evidence helps overturn wrongful convictionAt the request of Phillips’ lawyer, the Ohio Public Defender’s Wrongful Conviction Unit took up the case. In 2015, two officers who were also at the shooting scene in 2006 said that Lentz and Keane could not have seen the gunshots from where they were at the gas station and that no one fired at the officers during a chase. Sutton and Phillips asked for a new trial. An appeals court eventually found that “exculpatory evidence had been withheld by the state,” violating Sutton’s and Phllips’ rights, according to court records. The men were released on May 3, 2021 to wait for a new trial. In September 2022, they were retried and acquitted.In November 2022, Sutton and Phillips filed a claim against Ohio asking to be declared wrongfully convicted, a designation that would allow them to be compensated by the state. They were declared wrongfully imprisoned in March 2024. The state is appealing that decision. Last year, they filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office and the officers involved in their wrongful conviction. That case is pending.Michael Sutton shares his story of being wrongfully convicted during a Wrongful Conviction Day rally outside the Justice Center on Oct. 2, 2023. Sutton spent 15 years in prison before he was released in 2021 and later exonerated. Credit: Stephanie Casanova / Signal ClevelandThey’ve dealt with all of this since being dropped into a typical 30-something life after spending all of their 20s, the years when most people grow into adulthood and learn important life lessons as their brains finish developing, behind bars.“I didn’t get to make no mistakes in my younger adult life, compared to just coming home and being grown,” Sutton said. “It can be traumatizing if you don’t know how to come up out that shell and adapt to the real world nowadays… because yeah, all my 20s got taken. It’s really unfair, but I can’t get them 20s back no matter what. I went in before I was even 21.”‘I know I can be better than what I am right now’Since Phillips came home, people have told his mother, Elaine Witherspoon, her face shines with joy. But she’s still angry at the system for what it did to her son. Sitting at her kitchen table, across from Phillips, she stared into the distance toward the living room. “Sometimes I catch myself crying because I’m like, my son is really messed up behind this shit, like for real,” Witherspoon said. “Now it’s like he’s got to start all over to try to remember how we were. We were so tight. I got two daughters and my one son, and when I say we was unbreakable, we was unbreakable.”Credit: Kenyatta Crisp / for Signal Cleveland“I got a lot of anger inside of me,” she continued. Phillips has had to rebuild relationships with his mother and sisters, he said. “I don’t know how to really love them,” he said. “Now I gotta … learn them, they gotta learn me.”In the prison yard, an older man would tell him the air feels different on the other side of the walls. Phillips didn’t understand what he meant. They were outside, it’s the same air, he thought. But when he was freed, he understood. The way the breeze hit his skin did feel different, he said. When he hugged his mom, he realized just how much he needed to feel her touch and her love. “I was like a caterpillar and I got in a cocoon. And now that I’m back home … I got my wings,” he said. “I’m gonna fly. So I know I can be better than what I am right now.” Phillips is still working through his anger and selfishness, which he said he felt even before prison. He said he was “snappy” around others there. Every time he was close to getting his security classification lowered, which would allow him to transfer to a less restrictive prison, something happened, he said. He’d get in a fight. He got caught selling drugs. Before he went to prison, Phillips was a father of three girls. His oldest was 18 months when he was sent away.“I think I had my three daughters because I used to [think I was] grown, but I was a kid.… I was just treating women like a piece of meat,” Phillips said. “When I had my three daughters, God started showing me how to treat women. … I’m learning still.”Phillips recently became a dad to twins. Kenny Lee Phillips and Ambriosa Lee’Andrea Phillips will be two months old next week. “They’re amazing, they’re beautiful,” he said. “They’re teaching me to become a better person. I want to become a good father and a good husband.”Now, given a second chance at rebuilding relationships, he’s prioritizing spending time with his family. He knows it’ll take time, but things will fall into place, he said. “Everything takes time,” he said. “That’s what I’m learning too.”‘I feel like I got something to live for now’Sutton was planning to attend the University of Akron in 2006, until the state sent him to prison instead. Last year, UA offered him and Phillips full scholarships. Sutton attended his first semester online as he eased back into learning math and writing, subjects he said he didn’t find much need for in prison. He’s now taking classes on campus on Tuesdays and Thursdays. “I think about my past, like what it would have been like if I was in my teens. It would have been way more fun,” Sutton said. “But now, with me having a daughter and having a family, I’m in it for my business reasons.” Legacy Sutton was born in May 2023, almost 17 years to the day after Sutton was arrested. Michael Sutton kisses his daughter Legacy on the cheek as he feeds her a bottle at his home in January. Sutton became a father at 36 after being wrongfully convicted and spending 15 years in prison. Credit: Kenyatta Crisp / for Signal Cleveland“This is the biggest adjustment right here,” he said, holding his daughter on his lap so she could look out the front window. “I always wanted a baby.” Sitting on the couch in his living room, he bounced her up and down as she stood on his leg, occasionally kissing her cheek. “I got somebody that can carry my legacy for when I’m not here,” Sutton said of her name. “So I felt like Legacy was the absolute truth, [the most] beautiful name for her, because she represents me so much.” Sutton spends most days with his daughter. “Anywhere I go, she’s following me,” Sutton said. “When I wake up, she’s the first person smiling at me, and I’m just smiling back too. If I try to get on my laptop and do some schoolwork, she’s right there on the laptop with me, pushing buttons.”They watch “Gracie’s Corner” together. The YouTube show is Legacy’s favorite. “I’m just learning a lot of patience, a lot of gentleness. I’m learning how to not be so quick to rush out the house no more,” Sutton said. “I feel like I got something to live for now.”‘It takes a lot of perseverance’ to recover from wrongful convictionWrongful convictions can take a heavy toll on mental and physical health. A 2021 review of studies of people who’d been wrongfully accused of crimes found that many suffered from anxiety, paranoia, depression, sleeplessness and high blood pressure, among other things.The ordeal strengthened Phillips and Sutton’s friendship. “Me and Kenny, we share a bond because we know what this judge did to us,” Sutton said. “It’s like when the whole world was looking at us from a different point of view, me and Kenny was really going through it and living it together like, ‘We ain’t do this.’”The men have become like family since they were arrested that night in 2006. They work out together either at the gym or in Phillips’ mom’s basement. They visit each other several times a month. They’ve both experienced the small surprises of rejoining the world after a decade and a half in prison. Phillips’ sister commented that he was amazed the first time he saw a deer. Sutton, who had MySpace and a Sprint chirp phone before going to prison, had never seen Facebook before his release. But no amount of friendship or family support can give them back the decade and a half that was taken from them. Those were years in which they could have earned and saved money, perhaps purchased homes and launched careers. Phillips could have been involved in his daughters’ lives. Sutton could have begun his family sooner. Their pending lawsuit against the prosecutor’s office and police officers is about claiming some measure of compensation from the state that imprisoned them for almost half their lives then, when forced, simply opened the gates and sent them on their way. “It takes a lot of perseverance just to keep going forward because it’s not easy,” Sutton said. “Especially not receiving anything from the state, just to help me get my life back on track. I was done wrong, and then I just got released.”Kenny Phillips shares his story of being wrongfully convicted during a Wrongful Conviction Day rally outside the Justice Center on Oct. 2, 2023. Phillips spent 15 years in prison before he was released in 2021 and later exonerated. Credit: Stephanie Casanova / Signal ClevelandBut neither of them is waiting to forge new paths for themselves.In May, Sutton sat on a stage at the Huntington Convention Center in downtown Cleveland. Next to him were Albert Cleveland, Ru-El Sailor and Willie Knighten, who have also been exonerated of crimes in Ohio and in Illinois. The exonerees shared their stories with hundreds of people at an event meant to mobilize people impacted by the criminal legal system and their families to remove barriers for Ohioans with criminal convictions. Sutton is part of Voices of Injustice, a nonprofit group of exonerees who are raising awareness about wrongful incarceration and about the impact prison and jail have on people. He has talked to youth in Northeast Ohio and has shared his story with students at the University of Akron and John Carroll University. Sutton will also appear in a play titled “The Lynched Among Us,” featuring the stories of several exonerees.Phillips also wants to share his story and find ways to help others avoid or overcome the effects of the criminal legal system. He’s attending a media school, learning how to produce podcasts. “I just want everybody to learn,” he said. “We all need help.”International Wrongful Conviction DayOctober 2 is International Wrongful Conviction Day. In Cleveland, Ensuring Parole for Incarcerated Citizens (EPIC) will hold a rally outside the Justice Center to raise awareness about the issue. When: Wednesday, Oct. 2 at noonWhere: The Justice Center, 1200 Ontario St.The post A wrongful conviction sent two Cleveland men to prison for 15 years. Now they are rebuilding their lives. appeared first on Signal Cleveland.First published by Signal Cleveland.