Male prisoner on death row graduates from university with degree 


Ryan Matthews has been released after being wrongfully given a five-year jail sentence on death row - Then-17-year-old Matthews was wrongly accused of killing a man - After five years on death row, Matthews was exonerated and set free - Matthews has finally graduated with a degree after his release At, Ryan Matthews was wrongly accused of killing a man which led to a death sentence placed on him two years later. In April 1997, a man in a ski mask shot and killed a 43-year-old owner of Comeaux's Market in Bridge City, Louisiana, right across the river from New Orleans. Investigators thought Matthews, a black teenager, killed the white business owner, and he was later found guilty by one black juror and 11 white jurors, WFAA in Dallas reported. 


"All these years ago when I first came home, a reporter asked me what I wanted to do, and I told them I wanted to go to school," he said. And he followed through on that promise to himself and graduated from Texas Woman's University in Denton with a bachelor's degree in applied arts and sciences at 39. Moved by Matthews' story, his sister is set to pursue a PhD and his 71-year-old mother who has also enrolled in the university. His mother, Pauline, said she's "proud, proud, proud," as she could be. Matthews said he can feel bitter about his experience, though his feelings are nuanced.