My name is Maggie Freeling.

A majoringist and producer and this is unjust and unsolved.

A podcast about people who I believe are wrongfully incarcerated for crimes that are actually unsolved.

You've surely heard stories like these on the news, but the thing is, the ones you've heard about barely scratch the surface.

The Innocence Project gives a conservative estimate that about 20,000 innocent people are currently locked away in US prisons.

After reading some of these stories, I felt compelled to do something.

So I sent 20 letters to people who are locked up despite evidence pointing away from them.

Some responded through mail, some emailed, and some called me on contraband cell phones.

But all wanted their stories to be heard.

So I left my public radio job and decided to do just that.

In each episode, I speak with those people, their loved ones, supporters, and lawyers,

to shed light on how they wound up incarcerated for decades, despite the evidence,

and how that means the crimes they were convicted of are still unsolved.

This week, I'm telling the story of John Brookins.

On December 20, 1990, 26-year-old John went to his friend Sheila Ginsburg's house to help her clean.

Sheila was an older woman, 58, actually the mother of his on-and-off girlfriend, Sharon.

When John arrived at the house, he says he found Sharon standing over her mother's dead body, stomping scissors into her chest.

The crime scene was brutal, and John, a young black man standing over a dead white woman, panicked and fled the scene.

Months later, he was arrested for the murder of Sheila Ginsburg.

Despite an obvious alternate suspect, police misconduct, and ineffective counsel,

John has been in prison in Pennsylvania for almost 30 years.

But by the grace of God, as John would say, his wife Karen came into his life and found a new witness,

...