"How it Feels to be Falsely Accused" by Josh Green

Josh Green narrative essay, “How it Feels to be Falsely Accused” (2014), which originally appeared in Atlanta Magazine, magnifies that the criminal justice system is flawed. Green supports this claim by sharing the allegations of Clarence Harrison case. Green allocates Clarence story in order to make aware of injustice in the justice system and to point out the ways that people commonly are accused of false accusation. The intended audience of the essay are for people from Atlanta who have shared similar experience with Clarence Harrison and who like the Georgia Innocence Project to advocate for their injustice.

Like Josh Greene many of us have gone through what he went. Though it might not be as severe, most of us know what it is like to be falsely accused. His story made me think of how much it hurts when you're accused of doing something you know more than you could ever know anything in your life, yet still be punished for it. I put myself into his position and only thought about how stressful it must have been and how much anxiety issues he must have built from being in prison for so long, knowing good and well he was an innocent man. Like him, having this feeling was extremely relatable to me  more than likely to any reader, because being accused of not doing something can sometimes have a huge effect on aspects of our lives that we may not get back.

In Josh Green's story, "How it Feels to be Falsely Accused" he tells us that he was wrongfully accused as a rapist and thrown in jail for, "seventeen years, nine months, and twenty-six days" (Green 221). Though he was sentenced to life in prison then set free, he says that he has lost most of his life. The state rewarded him one million dollars in restitution but bad investments and taxes took most of that money away. He also states that even when your out, " you never get your family back" (Green 222) because his kids blame him for absents and blame him for what they been through while he was in prison. Green then had a bad accident during a snow fall and was hospitalized and there lost the rest of his money. Green now lives off his wife's school kitchen steward income and realizes that his life is gone. When they wrongfully accused Green, they not only took, "seventeen years, nine months and twenty-six days"(Green 221), they took his youth, his chance for success, his family, and yet Green thanks God and takes each day at a time to recover.