Freedom, and the fight for it, bonds together the lives and music of Exoneree Band. Its five members, Raymond Towler, William Michael Dillon, Antoine Day, Eddie Lowery, and Ted Bradford collectively spent more than a century in prison for crimes they did not commit.
Their music provides an outlet for the emotions that come from their struggles as innocent men incarcerated. It's a way to explain how they survived and continue to deal with their lost youths, adjusting to life in a changed world.
Their stories are heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, frustrating, and compelling tales of injustice. Each one of these men’s stories will help dispel the preconceived notions of who the wrongfully convicted are.
Our mission is to help these five men, shine a much brighter light on the massive atrocity of wrongful convictions and to activate anyone with an ounce of empathy to help fight for justice.
Synopsis
“That’s him,” she said, pointing from the witness stand. “That’s the man.”
You’re leading a fairly normal life until the moment when everything unimaginably changes.
You are arrested. You are tried. You are convicted. You are incarcerated.
You are innocent - yet the years tick by.
Kafkaesque doesn’t adequately describe the ordeals these men endured. Kafka wrote fiction - these men lived it.
These are extraordinary stories of five remarkable men. All sharing the common bond of having spent years of their lives behind bars for crimes they didn’t commit. And sharing a love of music.
The Exoneree series starts with Antoine Day, a father and working musician, who walks into a police station to quash rumors that he was involved in a murder and ends up spending 10 years in prison, four in solitary confinement and once with the man that killed his son.
Each episode will feature one of the band members and their story set against the backdrop of the Exoneree Band as they practice and try to secure an opening slot for a major act.