Giving thanks and
finding peace
amid injustice and
tragedy
Bob Braun,
Star-Ledger (nj.com) from the Web, November 25, 2005
Newark, NJ Nov. 24 -- Smiling
isn't easy for Nate Walker. Neither is feeling thankful.
"But I guess I do have things to be thankful for," says Walker, who is talking
about holidays like Thanksgiving and how they haven't been so happy. Not
like when he first got out of jail. Then he extracts something from his
overstuffed wallet. Glances at it, passes it over to me. With a
smile.
It is a picture of a boy, one of those school-issue portraits, wrinkled and soft
at the edges from frequent display. His name is Keith. His smile is
hopeful and optimistic.
"He is smart," says Walker, who laughs as he tells stories about how Keith has
figured out this problem or that for him. "And he calls me 'Dad.'"
This makes him pause because it reminds him, as every commonplace must, that
having anything close to a normal family life has been impossible for him for 30
years.
He is 63, not in good health. Walker had to stop working a few years ago
-- he was a roofer -- but he got dizzy up on the long extension ladders.
His heart. The doctor, who didn't know much about Walker, told him the
wildly irregular heartbeat might have to do with stress. He wondered what
could be bothering the big, solidly built man.
"Yeah, stress," says Walker. "Had a lot of that."
Starting with his arrest in 1975, when more police cars than he had ever seen
arrived at his apartment on West Grand Street in Elizabeth. Walker was
accused of raping a woman who lived across town. She picked him out of a
lineup.
"It was a different time then," says Walker. "I guess we all looked alike
to some people." Walker is African-American; his accuser was white.
The witness was convincing, as eyewitnesses often are, especially victims.
His boss at Phelps-Dodge testified Walker was with him when the rape occurred,
but the jurors in the 1975 trial apparently couldn't believe a witness could get
it so wrong.
At sentencing, Walker was not remorseful about a crime he said he didn't commit.
He insisted he was innocent even after a jury said he wasn't and that, as any
lawyer will say, does not please judges. His judge sentenced him to life
plus 50 years.
In 1979, the verdict was overturned on a technicality and Walker was freed, but
only until the state Supreme Court reinstated it. He fled before he had to
report to prison.
"I never belonged in prison to begin with," he says. "I wasn't going
back."
His wife Sharon joined him in California and, for two years, Walker lived an
odd, secret sort of life. He managed some apartments in Los Angeles and
found skills dealing with people, skills he never had the chance to use.
Walker also knew a fugitive existence couldn't last, and it didn't. One
night, cops burst into his apartment and brought him back to finish his life
sentence at Trenton's state prison.
But he did have people in his life who believed in his innocence. Sharon,
for one, who ignored her hopeless husband's insistence that she divorce him.
"I'd known him since I was 14," she says now. "I knew what he could do and
what he couldn't. He didn't rape that woman. And I wasn't going to
leave him."
His mother, Irene Walker, believed him, too, and she cast around for friends.
She found one in Union County Sheriff Ralph Froehlich. Centurion
Ministries, a Princeton group that represents what it believes are innocent
prisoners, took his case.
The effort succeeded. Hoboken lawyer Paul Casteliero -- with Froehlich's
help -- found a vial of evidence at Elizabeth police headquarters that never
made it to trial. It contained the rapist's semen, taken from the victim.
DNA analysis proved Nate Walker did not rape her.
Nine years ago this month, Walker was released from prison.
"Everyone was so happy," he recalls. For a time, he tried to resume a
life. But Walker soon began to feel very old. His mother died.
His brother Grant was killed in an accident. Walker's cardiac problems
slowed him down.
"Wasn't doing much of anything," he says.
"He has bad dreams," says Sharon. "Wakes up in the middle of the night,
all sweaty and thinks he's still in prison. I've got to hold him and tell
him it's okay."
But, recently, Walker -- as he did in California -- found new skills. He
is a speaker for New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, opposing
capital punishment.
"I'm proof that innocent people go to jail," he says.
His political work makes him feel better. But so has Keith's arrival.
The young man, 14, is a grandnephew whose own family has had a tough go and, in
the way of such things, he ended up with Uncle Nate and Aunt Sharon, an old,
childless but wise couple.
"We're raising him," says Walker. "He's like our boy."
Walker takes a last look at the photo before he slips it into his wallet.
He smiles.
"Did I tell you," he asks, "he calls me Dad?"
Bob Braun's column appears Monday and Thursday. He may be
reached at (973) 392-4281 or
bobbraun@verizon.net.
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