The Texas Tribune posts, "Son Seeks Answers in Father's Wrongful Conviction," by Brandi Grissom. It's part of the Trib's Errors in Judgment series.
It had been 14 years since their last meeting. Father and son sat uncomfortably last fall in the well-appointed home of the Houston lawyer who helped free Eric Olson’s father from prison.
The only clothes Eric remembered seeing his dad wear before were prison whites. Now, he noticed, his dad was dressed just like him: blue jeans, a button-down shirt, even similar shoes.
How should he feel about meeting the man who he had believed savagely killed his mother and felt no remorse? At age 28, with his pregnant wife at his side, Eric saw his father Michael Morton as an innocent man for the first time. Was this really happening, he wondered. It felt like a movie.
“I don’t know if I should feel tears of joy or laughter. I remember mostly being kind of numb the whole night, mostly sitting there, listening, just waiting for ... I don’t know. Waiting for everything to make sense again,” Eric recalled. “Only months before that, we were still supposed to hate him.”
Coverage of the earlier two reports in the Trib series, "Errors in Judgement," is at the links; earlier coverage of Michael Morton's exoneration and the National Registry of Exonerations, also available.
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