After 28 years of wrongful incarceration, Stephen Pina deserves to have his name cleared and move forward surrounded by those who love him. And yet, as the mother of a homicide victim, my heart and thoughts also turn to the family of Keith Robinson. When the person whom a family was told murdered their loved one is exonerated, they are suddenly confronted by a host of questions: Is the case now considered unsolved? Is the investigation reopened and active? Who walks with them as they confront a new reality decades later?

These questions are deeply personal; I know what it means for a survivor to discover that what you believed about your loved one’s case may not be the whole story. My 15-year-old son, Louis D. Brown, was murdered in 1993 and a man was convicted in connection with his murder. For years I trusted what the criminal legal system had told me. Over time, I encountered information that caused me to ask difficult questions about whether the person held responsible was, in fact, my son’s killer.

That experience is one reason the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute and Northeastern University School of Law Professor Andrew Haile produced a report that details the experience of the homicide victim’s family when a conviction is overturned. Stephen Pina and his family deserve justice, restoration, healing, and peace. Keith Robinson deserves to have his name remembered, and his family deserves truth, answers, support, healing, and peace.

As this case prompts renewed conversation, I hope we can hold both of these truths at once: a wrongful conviction demands justice, and so does an unsolved homicide.

-Chaplain Clementina Chéry, President & CEO