11 YEARS IN PRISON AND NOW FREE

Martha Akins, gripped by excitement and anxiety, didn’t stop cooking until the wee hours Tuesday morning–if only to keep weariness at bay. This was the day her younger brother, Donald Reynolds, would be released from prison after serving 11 years for a rape he did not commit.

The anticipation also kept Akins’ daughter, 19-year-old Tamika Reynolds, from slumber–so she, too, went to the kitchen of their Hyde Park apartment to stir the pots and chop vegetables. After all, she was about to see the uncle whom she hadn’t talked to without the presence of a prison guard since she was 7 years old.

“Now, he has his life back and his freedom, and he’s able to be with his family,” Akins said. “He will get the chance to enjoy the rest of his life.”

And by Tuesday afternoon, Reynolds was sitting in the living room at Akins’ apartment. He could enjoy and savor the embraces of his sister, the hugs of his baby brother, Michael, and the kisses of a half-dozen nieces, nephews and cousins–many of them born while their uncle was in prison.

“I feel real good,” said Reynolds, as he stood back and just looked at the family he hadn’t seen in such a setting since May 1986.

Reynolds, 32, and his childhood friend, Billy Wardell, also 32, both were released Tuesday into a brisk morning at the Joliet Correctional Center. Each was serving a 55-year sentence for the 1986 rape of a University of Chicago student near her dormitory, but DNA evidence won them exoneration this week.

Their first day of freedom was largely one for family reunions.

Wardell’s aunt, Cheryl Perkins, took the first steps of freedom with the nephew she had raised until his teenage years. Wardell’s parents died when he was 10.

“This is the beginning of a new life,” she said of Wardell, whom she recalled as a boy who played video games constantly and loved sports. “I can’t wait to talk to him about old times, take him to see `Soul Food,’ and update him on all the new advances that have come about since he’s been gone.”

“It was a blessing to know that he is going to be able to enjoy his life even though 11 years have been taken out,” said Angie Perkins, another of Wardell’s aunts, at a gathering in Harvey on Tuesday night.

A constant stream of family members and friends came to visit Wardell on his first day as a free man. Some of the younger people introduced themselves to the stranger who is their kin.

He sat quietly, soft-spoken, as the apartment full of aunts and cousins cheered newscasts that discussed his freedom.

“It feels good to be around my family,” Wardell said. “To be free and to be with my family and enjoy myself. I’m still trying to sit down and enjoy my family reunion and enjoy myself, to celebrate getting out.”

At a press conference outside the prison Tuesday morning, attorneys for both men said they will file claims in the Illinois Court of Claims for monetary damages. Each man might also be entitled to unemployment benefits for the 11 years served in prison.

Kathleen Zellner, Wardell’s attorney, said her office may sue the Chicago Police Department for violating her client’s rights. She said the lineup in which he was picked out as one of the woman’s assailants was “suggestive.”

“There needs to be some extreme changes,” said Zellner, who noted she gets about 50 letters a week from prisoners who have been denied DNA testing. Wardell is her third client in 16 months to be released because of new DNA evidence, she said.

DNA testing ordered last summer eliminated both Wardell and Reynolds as the source of semen taken from the University of Chicago student. On Monday, Cook County Judge Daniel Kelley vacated the convictions of both defendants and ordered a new trial. The Cook County state’s attorney’s office, however, opted to drop the charges.

Outside the prison, Reynolds expressed no bitterness toward the judicial system or the victim who identified him–only sadness that it took so long for the court to believe in his innocence.

“A day hasn’t gone by that I haven’t shed a tear,” said Reynolds. “I just kept believing that one day this day was going to come.”

Reynolds said he kept busy during the years in prison by reading the Bible, exercising and writing to the media so they would pick up his cause. “I tried to holler out to talk shows, Jenny Jones, Oprah, anybody, just to have them hear my side of the story. I got no response,” he said.

Thanking older prisoners for taking him under their wing and keeping him safe and sane, Wardell said the system robbed him of those irreplaceable years between boyhood and manhood.

“I am bitter at the system, and I don’t think it works for everybody,” he said. “The majority of the people are getting a kind of shady deal by the system. . . . The problem, I believe it is with the Chicago Police Department.”

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He later said, “I just tried to keep the faith. All I want now is a decent job, to have my own place and maybe have a family of my own one day.”

In prison, Wardell earned his high school equivalency diploma and took some college courses. He also learned graphic design in a prison course.

But the only thing that mattered Tuesday evening, for both men, was the ability to be with loved ones. At Akins’ home, children searched for the family cameras while she went to tend the food.

Reynolds followed her and the aroma of baked turkey, a ham, fried chicken, pecan pie, greens and macaroni and cheese.

He inhaled and said: “It smells gooooood in here. It’s been a long time since I’ve smelled good stuff like that.”