On a seemingly ordinary Tuesday in 1989, 16-year-old Huwe Burton came home to find his mother, Keziah, murdered. She was a nurse who had emigrated from Jamaica with her family, and worked in a home caring for the elderly. There was no sign of forced entry to the family’s apartment in the Bronx, and the police focused their investigation on the victim’s son and only child. After coercing a confession from Burton using flawed and psychologically manipulative interrogation techniques, the New York City Police Department charged the teenager with the murder. Burton was sentenced with 15-years-to-life. He served 19 years in prison, and 10 on parole. For decades, Burton’s existence was plagued by a crime he didn’t commit.
In a single day, his family’s life was destroyed. A father lost his wife and then his son. A young boy was robbed of his innocence. And the real murderer got away with the crime. How do you process this depth of pain? Burton’s response was to start running. The more he ran while in prison, the more he started to find a crucial mental and physical escape from his circumstances. With every step pounding on the ground, his heart beat the truth against his ribs and kept him going. “Prison does not define you – you define who you are,” Burton says. Even though he faced a potential lifetime behind bars, a small yet dogged hope fuelled his resolution to run the New York City Marathon as a free man.
The injustice of Burton’s case is almost incomprehensible. But in 2016, the team from the Innocence Project took legal action. An organisation that pursues exoneration for wrongfully convicted people, they proved his innocence. On 24 January 2019, Huwe Burton’s freedom was finally restored to him. His name was cleared, and his record expunged of his mother’s murder charge. Burton’s father, Raphael, passed away in 2005, and did not live to see his son liberated.
A few months after his exoneration, Burton ran the 2019 New York City Marathon. That day, one man’s race to the finish line looked like any other – exhausting and exhilarating. His face would have appeared as a glistening blur to the crowds of onlookers on the pavement. But with each footfall, Burton stepped further away from a past of persecution. “Continue to fight,” he says. “Don’t lay down – the moment you lay down, that’s when it’s over.” Huwe Burton knew the truth, and he wouldn’t allow the system to grind him into nothing. Now, he’s breaking ground on a future that’s only his.
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