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These three words are frequently employed to describe a situation in which justice has been debased or wrongfully withheld;

What was done to Lydell Grant in Houston, Texas in 2010 was a travesty of justice. He was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison for stabbing a man to death in a barroom.

Grant was wrongfully convicted.

He was innocent.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said as much in 2021 when the court declared Grant “actually innocent” for the barroom killing. DNA evidence and a confession by the real killer unequivocally confirmed his innocence.

Grant’s exoneration gained national media attention because of the travesty of justice in his wrongful conviction. The State of Texas tried to make amends for the seven years he spent in the state’s prison system by awarding him $1 million in compensation.

As of this month, Texas had paid Grant $317,000. The state still owes him $673,000.

Prison, standing alone, teaches an inmate nothing. Whatever an inmate gains or loses in prison depends exclusively upon the endeavors, mentally and physically, they undertake while incarcerated.

The success or failure to those endeavors will be determined by two frames of mind.

First, a reckless, irresponsible reaction to people, events and circumstances that percolates throughout any given incarcerated day which inevitably lead to negative consequences. Or, second, a measured, self-discipline reaction to all the myriad situations that arise in an angry, hostile, fucked-up environment which brings an acceptable level of tolerance. In other words, your mouth stays closed when every fiber in your brain screams “fuck you!”

One is lack of control, the other is control.

I don’t know what kind of inmate Grant was during his seven years in prison. I just know he was a former inmate given $1 million dollars and “we’re so sorry” pass from the State of Texas upon his release from prison.

So what did Grant do with that $317,000?

He bought a goddamn gun he used to kill a 33-year-old man in a “road rage” incident earlier this month in Houston.

Texas still owes him that $673,000 that it will have to continue to pay him while he awaits disposition of the road rage killing. If convicted, most of the remaining $673,000 will most probably go to court costs and victim restitution. He will not enjoy it in prison, for sure.

Did prison damage Lydell Grant?

I doubt it.

I’m sure that with a little cache of money in the bank, a socially inherited right to feel victimized, and a desire (not need) to open or conceal carry a firearm as a license to shoot the fuck out of anyone who cut him off in traffic, the “prison experience” had nothing to do with Grant’s decision to kill that man because of road rage.

Prison is a beast with a lot of warts. I don’t think “road rage” is one of them. That wart belongs strictly to stupidity.