by PAUL BASS The new haven independent
Gaylord Salters’ brother never got to live out his second-chance life. Salters is getting his own second chance — and has assembled a brotherhood of other people who were freed from prison because of government wrongdoing to work toward eliminating the need for second chances.
A judge ordered Salters freed from prison last July mid-way through a 40-year sentence by modifying his sentence in the face of revealed prosecutorial misconduct.
Since then Salters has sought to clear his name through an exoneration — and has linked up with other men with similar cases to seek changes in the criminal justice system.
That work will culminate next week in seven days of rallies. Billed “Injustice Amongst Us, 7 Days of Truth With Proof Rally,” it will take place June 12 – 16 outside the U.S. Attorney’s office building at 157 Church St. and June 17 – 18 outside police headquarters at 1 Union Ave., from 11 a.m.-3 .m. each day.
Speakers will range from wrongfully convicted individuals to activists seeking systemic change. Participating organizations include the NAACP, Yale’s Law and Racial Justice Center, the ACLU, the New England Innocence Project, and CONECT. (Click here for more information.)
Salters’ brother Johnny Johnson, too, was released early from a prison, in 2013, 17 years into a 75-year sentence, due to revelations of prosecutorial misconduct. Johnson received $4.2 million in a state lawsuit settlement, became a music promoter — then was shot dead in 2021.
That motivated Salters to seek a sentence modification based on revelations of misconduct in his own case, rather than wait for a state panel to decide on whether to reverse his conviction (a decision which is still pending; click here and here for previous stories about his case).
“I knew I had to get home to my mother. She needed me,” Salters said during an interview on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
Salters spoke in the interview of how he and his brother grew up in the pre-renovation Quinnipiac Terrace public housing development during the crack-fueled 1980s, seeing police misconduct firsthand and entering the drug trade in their teens. He argued that being in the “life” made people like him easy prey to be set up by cops and prosecutors. He argued that that too often makes it easy for the public to shrug off wrongful convictions with the argument that the “right” people are going to prison, even if not for the offenses they actually committed.
With next week’s seven-day rally, he hopes to start changing that view.
