Skip to main content

'I spent 23 years on death row before DNA proved my innocence'

Nick Yarris
Convicted of murdering a young woman aged just 20, Nick Yarris, now 56, spent more than two decades in a tiny cell, until new evidence freed him...

I was 20 when I was sentenced to death. My life had been on a one-way path to self-destruction for years. I don’t remember too much about my early life, but I think I had a happy childhood, growing up in Philadelphia in a loving family with five siblings.

But at age seven I was attacked by a teenage boy from the neighbourhood. He hit me over the head and raped me, leaving me with what I now know is brain damage. I began a downward spiral as a teen, and my parents blamed themselves. I was out of control and became involved in petty crime and drugs.

The chaos came to a climax when I stole a car while high. When I got pulled over by the police, we got into a scuffle. The officer pulled out his gun and somehow it discharged. Later, he made up a story and said I tried to kidnap and murder him. It was a stupid thing to do – I realised that as I awaited trial, looking at life in prison. But as I sat alone in the cell, I did something even more stupid. 

I was given a newspaper and I read it repeatedly. One story in particular seemed to speak to me and I had to keep reading it. I became obsessed with the murder of a young woman, Linda Mae Craig, and I cooked up a crazy story, thinking I might get a more lenient punishment if I helped police solve the crime.

It all happened so quickly, like a train started rolling that I couldn’t stop. A police officer walked over to my bed and I just started telling this story, that a drug addict called James had killed her.

I thought James, who I had lived with briefly, was dead, so I could trade this information. But James was alive – with an alibi. It was three days before they started accusing me of the killing.

Despite me having nothing to do with the crime, an inmate told them I’d confessed to him, and a police groupie made up lies to say she’d seen me stalking her. They made out I was psychologically unsound.

I had three alibis: my mother, father and sister, and they were treated as if they were lying for a monster – people rang them in the middle of the night to torment them, and once someone spat in my mum’s face, calling her a mother of a murderer.

The trial, four months later, lasted three days. Everyone spoke over the top of me and used words and terminology above my understanding. Watching my family in the witness box was awful – decent, honest humans ground to nothing.

They showed a photo of the victim on the autopsy table with six stab wounds in her chest. I knew after they showed those photos and none of the jury could look at me any longer, that I was going to be found guilty. It only took them an hour to sentence me to death.

I was sent to the worst prison in Pennsylvania. On my first day, I was beaten senseless. They put me in solitary confinement, and although I went on to do 8,755 days of solitary in total, the first two were the hardest. I almost went mad, beating my head against the wall.

My family came to see me twice a year, driving four hours to visit – I made a real effort to make sure they didn’t see me suffer. I started reading books, even the dictionary, to teach me how to speak properly. I didn’t want to stutter on my execution day.

There were several appeals, but I ruined it all by escaping after three years inside. I was being transported to court and we stopped to use the rest room. There were two sheriffs and I managed to get away. I out-ran a helicopter, got on the aeroplane and went to Florida.

Being free was crazy, going from isolation to being at Coco Beach for Spring Break where there were 20,000 college students partying. I met a girl called Vicky and we dated.

I pretended to be a normal human, sitting down at her family dinner table while the police were hunting me. There I was, an escaped Death Row prisoner, playing patticakes with Vicky’s little sister at the table.

I planned to run away to Suriname, but I just couldn’t handle the fear. Everywhere I went I expected someone to put a gun to my skull and shoot me. I saw my photo on the 10 Most Wanted list and that was enough for me. After 25 days, I turned myself in. Vicky’s mother told police I was the politest young man, and I’d brought nothing but smiles to the household.

It was brutal going back to prison. I was ‘Red Xed’, meaning at no time could a human hand touch me. I spent 14 years like that. If I went out to exercise, they put 50,000 volts of electricity around my stomach, controlled by a device the guards would play catch with to torment me.

The guards beat me senseless, broke many bones in my face to punish me for my escape. One time they beat me so badly my retina detached. My cell was 9ft by 6ft. I knew the other prisoners by voice. If we emptied the water from the toilet, you could have a conversation through the piping with the person in the next cell.

I formed bonds with the other prisoners, writing letters to their lawyers and helping them with their legal work. The officers said it made me dangerous, and put me in a mental cell – a lot of men went on hunger strike, angry on my behalf.

Years before, I’d been acquitted of the original charge of kidnap of a police officer. But it took them 15 years to give me a DNA test for Mrs Craig’s murder – I watched other men walk free while I waited. They found traces of two other men on Mrs Craig’s clothes and in her car, and none from me. Being cleared was a bittersweet moment, and even my lawyer revealed he’d always thought I was guilty.

The world on the outside was tougher than I imagined. I felt allergic to fresh air, and my feet hurt from wearing shoes again. I didn’t know how long I was going to live, so I did everything as fast as I could. Ten months after I was released, I went to Europe and I spoke in front of the UK Parliament against the death penalty.

I’m not angry, because I don’t take what happened personally. I’m happily married and living on the Oregon coast now. I’ve a knack for being a dad to my three little girls. I’m the best playmate you could ever want. I do a lot of charity work to help young people find the correct education in life. I want everything I’ve gone through to be for good, somehow.

In a lot of ways, the 14 years of freedom have been harder than my years on Death Row. Inside prison, everybody shows their true face, so you know who you’re dealing with. Out here, everyone shows you a façade, and it’s a let-down when you find the reality is not the same.

Linda Craig’s killer has never been found, and I think about it often – I am wracked with guilt about how the lie I told affected the case. I hope that one day DNA will help solve her case, just like it did mine.

Source: Daily Mirror, Rosie Hopegood, July 1, 2018


⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.


Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!



"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Most viewed (Last 7 days)

'No Warning': The Death Penalty In Japan

Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite criticism over how it is carried out. Tokyo: Capital punishment in Japan is under scrutiny again after the world's longest-serving death row prisoner, Iwao Hakamada, was awarded $1.4 million in compensation this week following his acquittal last year in a retrial. Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite international criticism over how it is carried out.

Louisiana's First Nitrogen Execution Reflects Broader Method Shift

Facing imminent execution by lethal gas earlier this week, Jessie Hoffman Jr. — a Louisiana man convicted of abducting, raping and murdering a 28-year-old woman in 1996 — went to court with a request: Please allow me to be shot instead. In a petition filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on March 16 seeking a stay of his execution by nitrogen hypoxia, a protocol that had yet to be tested in the state, Hoffman requested execution by firing squad as an alternative.

A second South Carolina death row inmate chooses execution by firing squad

Columbia, S.C. — A South Carolina death row inmate on Friday chose execution by firing squad, just five weeks after the state carried out its first death by bullets. Mikal Mahdi, who pleaded guilty to murder for killing a police officer in 2004, is scheduled to be executed April 11. Mahdi, 41, had the choice of dying by firing squad, lethal injection or the electric chair. He will be the first inmate to be executed in the state since Brad Sigmon chose to be shot to death on March 7. A doctor pronounced Sigmon dead less than three minutes after three bullets tore into his heart.

USA | Federal death penalty possible for Mexican cartel boss behind 1985 DEA agent killing

Rafael Caro Quintero, extradited from Mexico in 2022, appeared in Brooklyn court as feds weigh capital charges for the torture and murder of Agent Enrique Camarena NEW YORK — The death penalty is on the table for notorious drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, the so-called “narco of narcos” who orchestrated the torture and murder of a DEA agent in 1985, according to federal prosecutors. “It is a possibility. The decision has not yet been made, but it is going through the process,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Saritha Komatireddy said in Brooklyn Federal Court Wednesday.

South Carolina | Spiritual adviser of condemned inmate: 'We're more than the worst thing we've done'

(RNS) — When 67-year-old Brad Sigmon was put to death on March 7 in South Carolina for the murder of his then-girlfriend's parents, it was the first time in 15 years that an execution in the United States had been carried out by a firing squad. United Methodist minister Hillary Taylor, Sigmon's spiritual adviser since 2020, said the multifaceted, months long effort to save Sigmon's life, and to provide emotional and spiritual support for his legal team, and the aftermath of his execution has been a "whirlwind" said Taylor, the director of South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Execution date set for prisoner transferred to Oklahoma to face death penalty

An inmate who was transferred to Oklahoma last month to face the death penalty now has an execution date. George John Hanson, also known as John Fitzgerald Hanson, is scheduled to die on June 12 for the 1999 murder of 77-year-old Mary Bowles.  The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday set the execution date. The state’s Pardon and Parole Board has a tentative date of May 7 for Hanson’s clemency hearing, executive director Tom Bates said.

Inside Florida's Death Row: A dark cloud over the Sunshine State

Florida's death penalty system has faced numerous criticisms and controversies over the years - from execution methods to the treatment of Death Row inmates The Sunshine State remains steadfast in its enforcement of capital punishment, upholding a complex system that has developed since its reinstatement in 1976. Florida's contemporary death penalty era kicked off in 1972 following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Furman v. Georgia , which temporarily put a stop to executions across the country. Swiftly amending its laws, Florida saw the Supreme Court affirm the constitutionality of the death penalty in 1976's Gregg v. Georgia case.

Bangladesh | Botswana Woman Executed for Drug Trafficking

Dhaka, Bangladesh – Lesedi Molapisi, a Botswana national convicted of drug trafficking, was executed in Bangladesh on Friday, 21 March 2025. The 31-year-old was hanged at Dhaka Central Jail after exhausting all legal avenues to appeal her death sentence. Molapisi was arrested in January 2023 upon arrival at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka, where customs officials discovered 3.1 kilograms of heroin hidden in her luggage. Following a trial under Bangladesh’s Narcotics Control Act, she was sentenced to death in May 2024. Her execution was initially delayed due to political unrest in the country but was carried out last week.

Oklahoma executes Wendell Grissom

Grissom used some of his last words on Earth to apologize to everyone he hurt and said that he prays they can find forgiveness for their own sake. As for his execution, he said it was a mercy. Oklahoma executed Wendell Arden Grissom on Thursday for the murder of 23-year-old Amber Matthews in front of her best friend’s two young daughters in 2005.  Grissom, 56, was executed by lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m. local time, becoming the first inmate to be put to death by the state in 2025 and the ninth in the United States this year. 

564 People On Death Row In India, Highest Since The Turn Of The Century

In 90% of of all death penalty sentences in 2024, trial courts imposed sentences in the absence of adequate information about the accused, finds a recent report Bengaluru: Following the uproar and the widespread protests after the August 2024 rape and murder of a medical professional in Kolkata’s RG Kar hospital, there were demands for death penalty for the accused. The state government passed the Aparajita Woman and Child (West Bengal Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill 2024 (awaiting presidential assent) which included mandatory death sentence for rape which results in death of the victim or if the victim is left in a vegetative state, despite such a mandatory sentence being unconstitutional.