FLORAHOME, Fla. — Randy Seal's life was taken from him 20 years ago after he was wrongfully convicted and put on death row.
Since being released last week, Seal explains the the hardest part of his sentence was losing everything and everyone in his life when he needed them the most.
“Their thinking was if the system found me guilty, then I must be guilty,” he said.
This all began in 2004 when his home burnt down and his girlfriend died in the fire.
Despite pleading his innocence, he was given the death penalty for arson murder.
“Inmates have a tendency to not accept maybe what they did. The majority says I didn't do it and so I couldn't judge because I knew I didn't do it,“ Seal explained.
More than a decade later, the scientific evidence produced by the Florida Fire Marshal Lab that was used against seal was determined invalid.
“Reading what the newspaper article said that, you know, they thought I was a monster. They actually thought I poured gas on somebody and set him on fire, what were they to think?”
The lab lost its accreditation in 2016 and the Innocence Project of Florida collaborated with the Southern Poverty Law Center to prove that randy did not intentionally set the fire.
“I was just hearing that they don't take cases unless they think that they can win it,” Seal mentioned. "The more that they were digging into the case, the more hopeful I was that it was gonna happen and, and then eventually I knew it was gonna happen, but it's not 100% even when I got back to the, courts and took the deal that it wasn't 100% sure until the judge said that it was so it was. It was an emotional roller coaster.”
Tasting freedom for the first time in 20 years and it still doesn't feel real.
“Knowing that I didn't do it, I was told for 20 years what a bad person I was and I shouldn't have done what I did to be there if I didn't want to be there,” he explained.
Now Seal is catching up with his family and all the technology that has been introduced since he entered the prison system in 2004.
“Overwhelming. That's what it is. Anxiety. I was at work yesterday and a train goes by and I'm, I got stuck just looking at it. I haven't seen a train in 20 years.“ Seal said.
Starting life over at 60, Seal says hitting the restart button on life is far from easy.
“I lost 20 years of working to, towards my social security for” he said.
Seth Miller, the Executive Director of the Innocence Project of Florida, worked closely with Seal’s case since 2015, adding his wrongful conviction is more common of a tale than people may realize.
“No one knows exactly how many people have been wrongfully convicted and are in prison are wrongfully convicted. But some studies have estimated up to four or five percent of individuals who go to prison are there for crimes that they didn't commit, which, you know, if we have 80,000 people in prison, that's a lot of people here in Florida,” Miller mentioned.
The Innocence Project of Florida is working with Seal to get him adjusted to living in a free society. The group provides healthcare, employment and job training to help former inmates like Seal who lost everything when he went to prison.
Significantly more support than what most prisoners receive after their release.
“They're gonna try to provide you a halfway house and just turn you loose, give you 50 bucks,” Seal added.
Seal’s family have created a GoFundMe to collect support that will go towards him purchasing a vehicle to get to his new job.