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He Fights for "Forgotten, Forsaken Souls"
- The Salem News Online Edition (June 13, 2003)
- By Tom Dalton, Staff Writer
SALEM – Riding the train to work one day in the late 1970s, James McCloskey spotted a story in a Philadelphia newspaper about a man who had been convicted of the ice-pick murder of a 12-year-old girl.
"Boy, I hope they fray that son of a gun," McCloskey, a successful international management consultant, thought to himself.
Thirteen years later, McCloskey freed that man from prison.
Not long after the train ride, McCloskey's life went through a total transformation, almost a religious conversion. Last night, the 61-year-old McCloskey was here to accept the annual Salem Award for his remarkable work the past two decades freeing innocent people from prison.
The Salem Award is given annually in memory of the innocent victims of the Salem witch hysteria of 1692. Past winners include Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Dr. Jane Schaller, founder of Physicians for Human Rights.
McCloskey founded Centurion Ministries in Princeton, N.J., which has freed 30 people from prison over the past two decades.
"In my view, there are thousands and thousands of forgotten, forsaken souls buried in prison for crimes they didn't do," McCloskey said last night in a speech at the Hawthorne Hotel.
The presentation of the 11th annual Salem Award was preceded in the afternoon by a symposium, the first by The Salem Award Foundation, featuring a Rhode Island police detective who served six years for a murder he did not commit, and a Massachusetts woman who went to law school to help exonerate her older brother.
Many in the audience wept as they listened to J. Scott Hornoff, the detective who went to prison for someone else's crime, and Betty Anne Waters, the sister who devoted her life to freeing her brother.
In his keynote speech Thursday night, McCloskey told about his personal quest for "something that moved my heart and soul." He wound up walking away from the business world at age 36 to enter Princeton Theological Seminary. He planned to become a church pastor, but took a detour after doing a field education assignment at Trenton State Prison.
After meeting a prisoner and studying the transcripts from his trial, McCloskey was so convinced of the man's innocence that he took a year off from school, convinced a prominent defense attorney to take the case, raised $25,000 to cover court costs and freed the man from a life sentence for murder.
After getting his seminary degree, McCloskey founded Centurion Ministries. Just this week, three New York men who had been locked away for 18 years for rape and murder were let go due largely to Centurion's work.
McCloskey said the cases they have completed and others still under review represent nearly 60 individuals who have served more than 1,000 years in prison.
"That's a millennium of false imprisonment, and we're just a little organization in Princeton, N.J.," he said.
McCloskey said he is not naïve enough to believe that all, or even most of those in prison are innocent—but some are. His organization, he said, does not take up causes lightly. On average, Centurion spends seven years on a case.
"The real heroes are those who suffer the unimaginable plight of being buried in prison for somebody else's crime," he said.
The Salem Award Foundation, which this year was chaired by Kate Murray, said the real heroes are also people like McCloskey, who sacrifice much in their own lives to stand up for the innocent.
"I was put on earth to do this work," said the Salem Award winner.
Reprinted with permission from The Salem News.