Tiffany Rey

Forty-six years later, legal observers would say Richard Phillips had served the longest known wrongful prison sentence in American history. The National Registry of Exonerations lists more than 2,500 people who were convicted of crimes and later found innocent, and Phillips served more time than anyone else on that list. Undoubtedly, the justice system failed him. The police failed. The prosecution failed. His defense attorney failed. The jury failed. The trial judge failed. The appellate judges failed. But on that cold day in the prison yard, as he walked toward the Blind Spot with the homemade knife under his sleeve, Richard Phillips was not thinking about a nameless, faceless system. He was thinking about the man who put him there: his old friend Fred Mitchell.

Here’s how it began: On September 6, 1971, two men walked into a convenience store outside Detroit. The black man stood watch near the door. The white man pulled a gun and demanded money. They drove off with less than $10 in stolen cash. An alert citizen noticed the car driving erratically and called the police. The registration came back to Richard Palombo, also known as Dago, who had stayed the previous night with Mitchell and Phillips at the Twenty Grand Motel in Detroit.

Devry University (online
Keller School of Management (Present)

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