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After injustice, a fair year

By CASEY CORA
Published January 1, 2007

The children had lots of questions. Where did he go to the bathroom in prison? Did anyone ever escape while he was there?

After Alan Crotzer satisfied the curiosities of the kids gathered at the Childs Park Recreation Center, he also gave them something they didn't ask for: advice.

"If you haven't gotten in trouble yet, don't get in trouble," he said. "You all are the future."

Crotzer, who was freed from prison in January after serving 24 years for crimes he did not commit, was keeping a promise to another inmate who had asked him to tell children the truth about incarceration and the justice system.

There was no bitterness in his message. Only caution. "They control your life in there," he said.

Crotzer, 45, was released from prison Jan. 23 after DNA evidence cleared him of a 1981 rape and robbery.

Nearly a year after his release, Crotzer continues to receive a deluge of community support. Some cards and letters contain cash. Other people have provided him with life's essentials, like free health care and a turquoise 1997 Ford Crown Victoria.

It's not unusual for the wrongfully convicted to be met by an initial wave of community support, said Vanessa Potkin, a staff lawyer with the Innocence Project, a New York nonprofit legal clinic that specializes in wrongful convictions.

But as time passes and media coverage wanes, the exonerated often are left with few resources, she said.

That's what makes Crotzer's case exceptional; the support has endured.

"It's really amazing what the community has done," Potkin said.

Even more amazing is that Crotzer may soon have a home to call his own.

Real estate agent Elizabeth Allstaedt orchestrated Crotzer's move from his childhood home in Bartlett Park - a neighborhood Crotzer said is rife with drugs and violence - to a two-bedroom Allendale Terrace apartment. Now she is trying to buy him his first house.

She has pledged to donate all commissions on homes she sells for $1-million or more to a fund set up to buy Crotzer a home. Since starting the fund in September, she has contributed more than $2,000.

Why all the support for a stranger?

"So much has been robbed from him," Allstaedt said. "I want to buy a home for him, not give him a mortgage."

Still, through all of the philanthropy, life hasn't always been easy for the man learning how to get by after spending most of his adult life behind bars.

He has had several jobs this year. He quit his first, a hospital janitorial position, because it paid less than $300 a week. He also left his second job, working for the New Birth Abundant Life ministry in St. Petersburg, because the three-night-a-week shift didn't pay enough, he said.

Between jobs, he applied for food stamps, had trouble paying the electric bill, and came up short on the rent.

Despite the troubles, his first year of freedom has been full of good memories.

He has appeared multiple times in the local and national media, posed for a picture with New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, flown to San Francisco as the subject of a photography exhibit, and lobbied on behalf of exonerees in Tallahassee.

And in July, he met a woman.

Crotzer said girlfriend Quebella Small helps remind him that prison is only a memory.

"I tell him to relax," said Small, 36. "You're not in that place anymore."

Next year promises to be just as eventful.

On Jan. 13, Crotzer will be celebrated at a prayer breakfast at the Hilton St. Petersburg Bayfront. Two days later, he will march in Tampa's Martin Luther King Jr. parade.

In February, he heads to New York City for a dinner with the legal team that fought for his exoneration. The group, Crotzer said, never gave up on him.

"That's why I try to be as successful as I can," he said.

Casey Cora can be reached at 892-2374 or ccora@sptimes.com.

[Last modified December 31, 2006, 21:33:03]