Rediscovering Freedom;
Teddy Thompson Intends to Spend Time with His Daughters and Harbors no Bitterness Against the Man Who Fingered Him


September 12, 2007
Daily Press (VA)
By Peter Dujardin

Teddy Pierries Thompson is considering employment as a construction worker or perhaps as a plumber or an electrician.

Released from prison Monday after serving more than six years for a crime he didn't commit, Thompson, now 24, says he doesn't hold a grudge against the man who once said Thompson robbed him.

But Thompson says he no longer trusts the criminal justice system, and his lawyer says the family still hasn't yet decided whether to seek compensation from the state for time lost in prison.

For now, though, Thompson plans to take about a month off and begin to get to know his two 7-year-old daughters, Courtney and Nyasia, who stayed with him at his mother's house, on Cameron Street in Phoebus, his first night as a newly free man.

"I chilled with my daughters," he said of the girls, who were born of two different women only a few months after he was arrested. "I was in jail all their life. I'm just taking my time right now to get to know my kids."

But Thompson didn't sleep. He was too happy to be out from behind bars, sharing time with his friends and relatives.

"I didn't want to go sleep and wake up and find out I'm dreaming," said Thompson. "But now I know it's real."

Thompson, who went to prison in 2001 at age 18, was freed Monday, two months after Antonio Mitchell recanted and told law enforcement officials he'd identified the wrong person. Thompson had served more than six years in prison, and could have served at least 10 more.

Thompson said he harbors no bitterness toward Mitchell, who once said he was "100 percent sure" Thompson was one of two men who robbed him and a friend at gunpoint on March 26, 2000.

On July 30, Mitchell told investigators that another man has since acknowledged being the robber, and even offered to return the money he took. Investigators who interviewed him believe Mitchell was being truthful in recanting his identification of Thompson. "I know people make mistakes," Thompson said of Mitchell.

He's not as forgiving when it comes to the criminal justice system.

Thompson said Hampton detectives were quick to target him, and that the jury went with the word of one person over strong counter evidence in Thompson's favor.

"I have nothing against the jury, but you're supposed to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt," he said.

In this case, he asserts, there should have been lots of doubt - especially since he had witnesses and documentation placing him at a Virginia Beach recording studio at the time of the robbery.

Doubt should also have been raised, Thompson said, when the other robbery victim said Thompson was the wrong man. Although a written statement from that victim was allowed in court, that victim failed to show on two scheduled trial dates.

While Thompson gets used to life as a free man, his attorney, Charles Haden, said the family "will be looking at their options" and deciding whether or not to seek compensation from the state for the time he spent locked up.

A state law allows the Virginia General Assembly, at its discretion, to pay someone who's been put wrongfully behind bars up to 90 percent of the Virginia per capita income for each year in prison.

Thompson said Tuesday that he learned a lot in prison - first and foremost is that prison is "no place for nobody."

"You're talked to like an animal or a child," he said. "Every day, all day."

An inmate's life, he said, is run by "bells and whistles."

"I'm not going back," he said. Instead, he said, he's going to take a month off relaxing, and then try to land a job as a plumber, electrician or construction worker, most likely with companies run by relatives. Thompson also said he would try to talk with young people at his church about staying out of trouble.

It was always difficult, he said, to watch his mother and other relatives "leave out the door and I go the other way" during their visits to him at Southampton Correctional Center every other week.

Because he went into prison as a young man, Thompson said he had to earn the respect of fellow inmates. "They test you until they realize you can stand on your own ... You try to stay away from the nonsense, and surround yourself with positive people."

In the end, he said, many prisoners liked him. "You're not even supposed to be here, you're too smart to be here," he said other prisoners told him. "I'll do all I can to keep in touch with some of them."

Thompson also says forcefully that he didn't commit a second robbery that he was convicted of about the same time as the Mitchell case - even though he pleaded guilty to it in court and received a 10-year suspended sentence.

Haden, who was also Thompson's trial attorney in that case, said he advised Thompson to take the plea bargain because prosecutors were offering all 10 years suspended. "It's not too often that kind of offer is made," Haden said. "We could have had an even worse disaster."

Thompson did, however, acknowledge that he "wasn't an angel" over the years.

He had a felony malicious wounding conviction after he used a hammer in a fight when he was 15 years old. "That was a mistake," he said.

That conviction led to probation, which he violated by using marijuana and failing a urine test.

When police approached Thompson in 2001 after Mitchell identified him as the robber, Thompson tried to run - thinking, he said Tuesday, that police wanted him only for the probation violation. That came back to haunt him in the trial, however, when the fact that he tried to run worked against him.

Even after Mitchell recanted his earlier testimony this summer, Thompson didn't want to get his hopes up - until he walked out of Southampton Correctional Center.

"Even after it was looking good, it didn't seem real until they let me out of the gates."


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