Roosevelt Myles, an inmate at Illinois River Correctional Center who has been waiting 20 years for a wrongful conviction hearing that was granted by the appellate court in 2000, has now earned enough “good time” sentencing credit to leave prison in August. Under different circumstances, for a man who has already spent 27 years behind bars for a murder he says he did not commit, waiting just a few more months to get to live with his fiancée and begin a career as a paralegal might have been tolerable.
Myles, who is 55, is particularly worried about how the virus would affect him if he gets it, given that he has diabetes and high blood pressure and has already had pneumonia twice in his life. “I’ve been looking at the news. It’s bad out there,” Myles wrote me via the prison’s e-mail service at the end of March. “I’m not overreacting—if I’m infected with COVID-19, there’s a strong chance that it may become fatal to me.” When he was first placed in lockdown, reading news about the virus with no way to check on his family and friends, he became so worried that he ended up with an ulcer.
“They need certain documentation, and getting documentation from your clients who have no access because they’re all on lockdown is difficult,” says Bonjean. “I know there are people who are working hard on their end to process these petitions, but it’s slow going.”
