Entertainment
Imprisoned for 35 years in prison: he has just been released thanks to the well-known TV program!
After 35 years in prison, he manages to get out of it thanks to a television program: the incredible story of a man barely 50 years old
When he was thrown into jail he was just 18, along with two other people aged 20 and 22. They are all over 50 now, but they will never forget the 35 years they spent behind bars in prison.
It all started on September 21, 1986 in southwest Chicago in a fire that killed two brothers, Julio Martinez and Guadalupe Martinez. The charges fell on John Galvan, Arthur Almendarez and Francisco Nanez who were sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole and with the possibility of being sentenced to death. The three have lived 35 years in prison for a crime they never committed: one of the many cases that adds to the long list of times in which, in the Chicago police, they are accomplices forced to false confessions, in particular by young people from BIPOC who use violence, threats and intimidation.
The three, in fact, were found guilty of first-degree murder and aggravated arson after confessing to police tossing a lit molotov cocktail bottle with a cigarette. The statements immediately seemed implausible, especially since John Galvan and the others said they had signed off on the police allegations of physical abuse. But it was Galvan himself who changed his own destiny.
Mythbusters Saves the Lives of Three Innocents: The Incredible Story of 35 Years in Prison
On one of the usual days in prison, John Galvan was watching an American entertainment and science show, Mythbusters (known as Myths to Dispel in Italy) on television. During the episode, the two special effects experts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman proved that lighting a Molotov cocktail with a cigarette was not possible. A team of researchers analyzed the same subject by trying to light the fire with a cigarette 2,000 times with poor results.
Thanks to the demonstration of the team’s experts and some testimonies on the violence used by the police officer to extract a confession, Galvan’s lawyers succeeded in obtaining his release after 35 years of imprisonment.