A Decade of Running to Free the Innocent
Advocates in Massachusetts celebrate 10 years of using running to help free wrongfully convicted people from prison
Two men were convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison — one was guilty and the other innocent, but for years, they supported each other behind the walls of the state prison in Norfolk, Massachusetts. And for the past decade, their shared love of running has helped free other people who were wrongfully convicted.
In 1999, when he was 19 years old, Alex Rodriguez shot and killed a convenience-store clerk during a robbery, a crime for which he says he has accepted responsibility. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder the following year and was later incarcerated in MCI Norfolk.
It was at that prison that Rodriguez met Victor Rosario, who had been convicted of setting a deadly 1982 fire in Lowell but maintained his innocence during his decades of incarceration. And it was there that Rodriguez trained Rosario to run marathons as part of a runners club for incarcerated men.
Rosario’s conviction was finally overturned in 2014 after he spent 32 years in prison. He soon partnered with one of his lawyers to found the Running for Innocence team, which raises money to help investigate possible wrongful convictions. And this year, Rodriguez ran with the team for the first time after being released on parole.
“It was just an opportunity for me to give back to guys on the inside that I know [are] still fighting,” Rodriguez said. “Some of [those] men have children and wives and communities that miss them and that believe in them.”
The team has an annual tradition of participating in the Genesis Battlegreen Run at Lexington High School. Rosario, who now lives in Puerto Rico, has not participated in the race since 2022. But this November, his former lawyer and Running for Innocence cofounder, Lisa Kavanaugh, celebrated the team’s 10th anniversary with Rodriguez and dozens of other teammates.
Kavanaugh is the director of the innocence program at the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS), the state’s public defender agency. She said the team raises money that’s used by the state’s three innocence programs — the CPCS program, the Boston College Innocence Program, and the New England Innocence Project — to pay for private investigators and expert witnesses.
The funds are useful, Kavanaugh said, because they allow lawyers to pay for investigations for their clients without going through the courts.
“The decision whether to grant funds is discretionary on the part of the judge,” she said. “It’s often very difficult to convince a judge to give you that funding before you’ve been able to learn whether the funds are going to be helpful or not.”
Since Running for Innocence was formed, money raised by the organization has paid for 53 investigations, helping to free 13 people from prison (six of whom have been fully exonerated) and assisting with 12 new-trial motions that are pending in courts throughout the state, according to information provided by the team.
Kavanaugh said the team had its largest turnout ever this year.
“It’s turned into something that’s so much bigger than Victor [Rosario] or I could have imagined,” she said. “It just was amazing to me to see how much it’s grown without having some kind of careful strategic plan in place. It just happened organically.”
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“For Me, It Was Everything”
Two days before the Lexington race, Kavanaugh was able to take Running for Innocence’s mission inside the walls of MCI Norfolk — the very prison that led to the team’s creation. One of her current clients, Brian P., organized an event called the Walk for Innocence at the prison. With permission from the Massachusetts Department of Correction, Kavanaugh and four other members of the running team took part in the walk.
Kavanaugh said that Brian P. is serving a life sentence for a first-degree murder conviction but has a pending motion for a new trial in Superior Court.
“Brian’s idea was that he wanted to do something inside the wall that was connected to the work that we’ve been doing through the team on the outside,” Kavanaugh said in an interview. “The primary goal of the event was to just engage in awareness building and, I think, to some extent illustrate to people in prisons that there really is this work being done on the outside.”
Kavanaugh spoke to the 108 incarcerated men who attended the walk and told them the story of how she and Rosario founded the team, saying the group “was, quite literally, born inside the visiting room of this prison,” according to a copy of her prepared remarks.
Kavanaugh said she was visiting Rosario at MCI Norfolk in 2013 to discuss his case. Rosario had heard that Kavanaugh was a long-distance runner and said he was a distance runner too, she recounted. He told her that he was part of a running club, ran laps on a track inside the prison, and had gradually worked up the stamina to run a full marathon, she said.
Rosario was not available for an interview, but he discussed his life and history with running at length in a 2018 podcast.
“In the prison, I think [running is] freedom,” he said. “It’s a moment that you are by yourself, a moment that you can meditate, a moment that you can go into your deepest thoughts … and [think about] something in the future. For me, it was everything.”
He said that he started telling other incarcerated men that on his 50th birthday, he would run one lap for every year he had been alive.
“The thing is that when you open your mouth, you have to back it up,” he said. “They [said], You cannot do it. Now, it’s a challenge.”
It was a tiring ordeal, Rosario said, but encouragement from the other men gave him the motivation he needed to complete all 50 laps.
He said he later completed his first marathon — which required running 76 laps — in October 2013.
Kavanaugh said that Rosario’s story inspired her to register for the 2014 New York City Marathon. Just a few months before the race, a judge overturned Rosario’s conviction due to new scientific evidence that discredited the case against him.
“After his release, he offered to be my training partner,” Kavanaugh said. “And in the many, many hours we spent together running and preparing for that day, I came to appreciate how important Victor’s running journey had been to his ability to maintain his sense of humanity while [incarcerated].”
The experience led the two to create the Running for Innocence team to help get other wrongfully convicted people out of prison, she said.
Another attendee of the walk at MCI Norfolk was Shar’Day Taylor, a social-services advocate for the Exoneree Network, an organization that helps obtain housing and other services for people whose convictions have been overturned.
Taylor is the younger sister of Sean Ellis, the director of the Exoneree Network and an exoneree himself. In 1995, after three trials, Ellis was convicted of murdering a Boston police detective. But in 2015, after Ellis spent 21 years in prison, a judge overturned his conviction due to evidence of police corruption.
“Walking through the doors, I felt a bit nervous and a little resentful, just because of all the years that [were] stolen from our family,” Taylor said in an interview. “But once we made it through, all I felt was gratitude and appreciation and love.”
In her prepared remarks, Taylor said that her brother was incarcerated when she was three years old and thanked the men at MCI Norfolk for supporting him during his time there.
“Behind these walls, you became the family that he had access to, and I am appreciative of the wisdom, the love, and support he received,” she said. “It is important for you to know that he has not forgotten about you.”
Taylor said she was able to walk with two men who had been close to Ellis. One of them was responsible for the artwork on the birthday cards Ellis sent her when she was a child, she said.
After the walk, the men formed two long lines so they could speak with Kavanaugh and Taylor.
“Some of them had questions about how to request assistance from the innocence program,” Kavanaugh said. “I also got to meet a number of the people who Victor had interacted with. I met the man who is the current head of the runners club at Norfolk.”
Taylor said that around half of the men who attended the walk said they knew her brother and wanted to thank her for being there, including Brian P., the event organizer. She said she cherished “the opportunity to be able to see that despite what he’s going through, how big his smile is, how beautiful his heart is.”
Kavanaugh said the men at MCI Norfolk raised $550 for the running team, which was a significant amount of money for incarcerated people who only make $2 a day. She said it was hard to describe how it felt to walk with them.
“It was powerful because it just opened up the communication between us and this community behind bars that does a lot of incredible work,” she said. “I came away with a really powerful sense of how much is happening behind the wall.”
She said the visit to MCI Norfolk made her realize that in the coming years, the running team should focus on connecting more with people inside prisons and helping them prepare to live healthier lives when they are released.
“He’ll Always Challenge You”
When the team met for the Lexington race later in November, it was a special day for Kavanaugh because the man who trained her former client was there with her. Speaking into a megaphone, she introduced Rodriguez to applause from the other team members.
“Victor became a marathon runner at Norfolk,” she said. “I’m especially proud to say that his trainer, Alex Rodriguez, is here today, having achieved his freedom.”
Rodriguez said that Ellis asked him to run with the team. Rodriguez said he told Ellis that he was willing to participate but was guilty of the murder he was convicted of committing.
“[Ellis] goes, It has nothing to do with your innocence of guilt, man. It’s about people coming together for a cause,” Rodriguez recounted.
Rodriguez said that he met Ellis at MCI Norfolk through a program called Jericho Circle.
“[It] was like a men’s healing circle, dealing with deep trauma and things like that,” Rodriguez said. “I really got to know him there. Just him sharing his life and his experiences.”
Rodriguez said that Ellis was “a very inspirational person” who worked to better himself and showed younger incarcerated men that they could “change their lives before it’s too late.”
Ellis founded the Exoneree Network with Rosario and another exoneree named Ray Champagne, who is now deceased.
Ellis said he’s attended every run in Lexington since he was released from prison. He said he participates because his family needed financial assistance to help get his conviction overturned and he wants to help others in similar situations.
“It’s an important part of my healing process,” he said. “It is important for me and others within the Exoneree Network community to be staying involved in the work, trying to help others who are still incarcerated and fighting wrongful convictions.”
Ellis’s sister, Taylor, was also at the run with her twins, who had just turned three. She ran the 5k while pushing their stroller.
“I feel so accomplished,” she said. “I know who I’m running for. I know the purpose for why I’m running, so that motivates me even more.”
Kavanaugh said she was pleased with this year’s record turnout, noting that events like these give people from different communities opportunities to meet one another. For example, she said, high school students who joined the team were able to speak with people who were wrongfully convicted.
“There’s a community of people who like to run,” she said. “And then there’s a world of lawyers and investigators and social workers who do this work. And I’ve always liked that the teams bring people into this space of thinking about wrongful convictions through an activity that they already want to do.”
There was one notable absence this year: Victor Rosario, who was in Puerto Rico.
Rodriguez said that since he was released from prison in January 2023, he’s stayed in touch with Rosario but hasn’t seen him in person.
But after finishing the 10k, Rodriguez received a text from his long-time friend saying he plans to return to Massachusetts next year so they can race each other.
Rodriguez spoke fondly of Rosario, saying their relationship inside MCI Norfolk was life changing.
“He’ll always challenge you,” Rodriguez said. “You could be at a roadblock in your life and feel stuck. Victor, he’ll always encourage or inspire a person to continue to knock down those barriers and seek something better for themselves.”
Rodriguez said that if he had been released from prison after his first parole hearing in 2014, his plan was to live with Rosario’s wife until he found his own housing while Rosario continued fighting his conviction.
“That’s pretty much how close me and Victor are,” Rodriguez said with a chuckle. “We connected on everything. We would sit, we’d talk about pretty much everything from family to religion to legal stuff. Victor is probably the closest friend I had in prison.”
Rosario became an ordained minister in prison and gave sermons about self-forgiveness and performing good works to help others, according to Rodriguez.
“He let guys know that there’s a greater purpose in the things that you do,” Rodriguez said. “You don’t necessarily have to know the impact you’re having to actually do something good for somebody.”
When Rodriguez was in prison, he trained five or six days a week and ran 12 marathons, he said, but he’s been so busy since he was paroled that it’s been difficult to find time for running.
However, he said he plans to train for the race next year when he’ll run against his old friend.
Thanks for reading, and my apologies for not being a better sports photographer.
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