Donald Verger
An Artist’s Arresting Act of Kindness
By Carol Leonard
If you don’t already know who Donald Verger is, you are about to get a crash course! I met Donald through social networking (Please do not discount the power of social networking, it really works!). Donald happened to be one of my ‘followers’ on Twitter. One day he sent me a direct message with a few links, and of course, I had to check them out. Let me tell you, Donald’s art work is beyond breathtaking! Truly gifted, Donald has been likened to Ansell Adams, famous for his stunning art work and photography. I was blown away. I kept thinking, “this man is just amazing, his talent is marvelous, he is widely acclaimed and successful, why is he following me?
I am on Twitter as “Prison Reform Movement”, as a ‘public service announcement’. I tweet about our nation’s criminal justice system, so I was lost at the connection, until I clicked the last link he provided. Did I say I was blown away already? Well after reading more about Donald, it was not hard to figure out why this amazingly humble and very talented man was following me.
On December 31st of 2008, Donald Verger was arrested for robbery. According to the link he sent me, on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, Donald was shopping in Portland, Maine, when two police officers stopped him. A salon had been robbed hours before and Verger was similar to the victim’s description of the perpetrator.
The officers conducted a “show-up” identification in which the victim viewed him on the street and said he was the robber. Donald was arrested and spent two nights in jail before friends bailed him out. Donald said he had nothing to do with the crime, and the charges were finally dropped a month later – but not before his eyes were opened that anyone can be wrongfully accused (or convicted) of a crime they didn’t commit. He has said many times that he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not all people accused of serious crimes have the means to hire a top-shelf defense team. Had he been indigent, his lawyer Peter DeTroy has said, “I think he would have been indicted and gone to trial, I truly do.”
That same thought occurred to Donald even as he was riding to jail in the back of the police cruiser. It was an epiphany of sorts, he said, knowing that he was innocent, that he had a lot of well-placed people who would (and did) write letters on his behalf, and that however traumatizing the whole thing was, he would soon get his life back.
