At 17, Alphonso James was pulled off his family’s porch in Milwaukee, interrogated for 12 hours with no lawyer, and signed a confession he says was blank when he signed it. He spent the next 32 years in prison for a murder with no physical evidence against him. He taught himself to read in solitary confinement, earned degrees from behind bars, and walked out on parole in 2017 — not exonerated, a distinction he’s still fighting to change. Now boxes of evidence he was told were destroyed have resurfaced after 41 years, and DNA results from a private lab could end this any day.
On this episode of The Transform U Live Show, Alphonso James — author of “Unfragile: The Truth of Alphonso James” and co-founder of Unfragile Farm — talks with host Marcus Hart about wrongful conviction, self-forgiveness, surviving childhood sexual abuse, and what it takes to stay whole when the system has already decided who you are.
CHAPTERS (pulled from the raw interview — recheck against your final edit before publishing)
0:00 Cold Open: Meet Alphonso James
2:48 July 27, 1985: The Day the Police Came
5:22 Convicted and Sentenced to 105 Years
8:08 Inside the Interrogation Room
9:28 “Why Did You Sign a False Confession?”
11:02 An All-White Jury and a Predetermined Verdict
12:18 A Life Sentence at Seventeen
13:24 Measuring 32 Years Inside
14:47 Earning Degrees in Solitary Confinement
15:18 The Chaplain Who Wouldn’t Stop Showing Up
16:52 Writing Unfragile
18:05 Mentoring Other Incarcerated Men
21:34 How the Wisconsin Innocence Project Found Him
22:50 Parole vs. Exoneration — The Difference That Matters
24:39 Walking Out on Valentine’s Day, 2017
26:02 The Fight to Clear His Name Today
26:53 Is There Still Anger?
30:17 Self-Forgiveness as the First Step to Healing
32:29 Breaking the Silence on Childhood Abuse
34:29 The Halle Berry Moment
36:32 New DNA Evidence and What Happens Next
38:00 Unfragile Farm, the Book, and Where to Find Him
Get the book: “Unfragile: The Truth of Alphonso James”
Subscribe to The Transform U Live Show for more conversations like this one.
#WrongfulConviction #DNAEvidence #InnocenceProject
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