What If He Actually Did It?

I had been avoiding my friend Jens Söring for months. Whenever his emails arrived, I’d open a reply window and stare with dread at the blinking cursor. I no longer knew what to say to him, this man who had spent 33 years in prison for a double homicide he swore he didn’t commit.

Jens had been convicted of murder in 1990. I had been convicted of murder nearly 20 years later. But the parallels between our cases were striking. While studying abroad in Italy in 2007, I had been accused of killing...