Dewey Bozella: A wrongfully convicted criminal who walked out of prison and competed in his first and only professional fight at 52
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Dewey Bozella
Dewey Bozella is a former professional boxer who was unjustly sentenced to prison. In 1977 at the age of 18, he was arrested for murder. An elderly woman had been beaten and suffocated to death in an apartment in Poughkeepsie, New York. Police arrested Dewey as the murderer although Dewey had no involvement in the crime.
In 1983, Dewey Bozella was convicted of the murder and sentenced to a punishment of 20 years in prison. He continued to deny the charges against him and kept saying that he was innocent. Nevertheless, Bozella contacted the Innocence project (a nonprofit legal organization) to fight his case.
Later his case was investigated by Wilmer Hale, and the lawyers at Wilmer Hale were able to reveal new details on his case proving his innocence. On October 28, 2009, after 26 years in prison, Bozella was finally a free man.
Interestingly, Dewey Bozella had taken up boxing before being locked up. While imprisoned at Sing Sing Prison, Dewey returned to his favorite sport. He became the prison’s light heavyweight boxing champion. After his release from prison in 2009, he began mentoring and teaching young people how to fight and the danger of joining gangs.
He never gave up on his dreams, and two years after his release, The wrongfully convicted was able to fulfill his dream. On October 15, 2011, Dewey Bozella not only made his professional boxing debut but also emerged victorious against Larry Hopkins.
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The documentary movie on Dewey Bozella shed light on the injustice against him
In 2012, ESPN captured the inspirational story of Dewey Bozella through his struggles to be declared an innocent free man. This documentary revealed his story from his prison life to his first professional boxing debut.
In 2011, Bozella’s story was at the ESPN annual ESPY Award show. Bozella was also awarded the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. This documentary certainly helped Bozella’s story to reach the public.
Dewey then went on to publish his biography ‘Stand Tall: Fighting For My Life, Inside and Outside the Ring’ in 2016, depicting his struggles. Bozella’s life has been a lesson to all that there is light at the end of the tunnel. That hope is the light that keeps us alive during the darkest of times.
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