Richard Anthony Jones proclaimed his innocence for 17 years, locked in a Kansas prison for a robbery he never committed.
He had a real alibi: he was with his girlfriend and family when the crime occurred in 1999. There was no DNA or fingerprints linking him to the scene. Only the word of a witness who identified him from among six photographs. That was enough to sentence him to 19 years.
Inside the prison, other inmates constantly mistook him for a man named Ricky, physically identical to him. That coincidence reached the ears of the Midwest Innocence Project, which tracked down the real perpetrator. Judge Kevin Moriarty was stunned by the resemblance and ordered his immediate release, although it was already too late to try Ricky.
In 2018, the state of Kansas paid him $1,100,000. Is that money enough to give back the 17 years that an error took from him forever?