Recipient of the 2013 The Media for a Just Society (MJS) Award presented by the National Council on Crime & Delinquency
Once a murderer, always a murderer? Or can a murderer be redeemed? Who do they really become after they have served decades in prison? What does it take for a killer to be accepted back into society? What is the chance that he will kill again?
Award-winning journalist Nancy Mullane found herself facing these questions when she accepted an assignment to report on the exploding costs of incarceration. But the men she met behind the walls astonished her with their remorse, introspection, determination, and unshakable hope for freedom and forgiveness.
Life After Murder is an intimately reported, utterly compelling story of five convicted murderers sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, who discover after decades in prison that their second chance, if it comes at all, is also the challenge of a lifetime. It follows their struggle for redemption, their legal battles to make good on the state’s promise of parole, and the lives they found after so many years inside.
ED RAMIREZ
Conviction, 1982:
Second-degree murder
Sentence:
Fifteen years to life with
the possibility of parole
Parole reversed by
Governor Gray Davis
DON CRONK
Conviction, 1984:
First-degree murder
Sentence:
Twenty-five years to life
with the possibility of parole
Parole reversed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
JESSE REED
Conviction, 1985:
First-degree murder
Sentence:
Twenty-seven years to life with the possibility of parole
Parole reversed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
PHILLIP SEILER
Conviction, 1988:
Second-degree murder
Sentence:
Seventeen years to life with the possibility of parole
Parole reversed by Governor Gray Davis and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
RICH RAEL
Conviction, 1982:
Second-degree murder
Sentence:
Twenty-two years to life with the possibility of parole
Parole reversed by Governor Gray Davis
