Forty years ago, an anonymous caller alerted the NYPD to a suspicious man in a tan jacket selling drugs on the street. When the police arrived, the alleged drug dealer shot one of the officers and fled the scene. Hours later, a martial arts teacher, Otis Johnson, who was also wearing a tan jacket and training in a nearby park, was arrested and convicted of the attempted murder of a police officer.
Otis spent 40 years behind bars but has always maintained that his arrest was the result of misidentification. At the age of 69, Otis finally walked out of prison to face a very different world from the one he remembered. The first episode of our new Imprisoned series, about ex-cons who say they served time for crimes they didn’t commit, tells his story.
