‘I was released from jail after 68 years – what I saw on the streets stunned me’
Joe Ligon was just 14 when he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after he was convicted of two counts of first degree murder following the death of two men in 1953
Joe Ligon was released after 68 years in prison(Image: Justice in Juvenile)
The world was vastly different in 1953 compared to the one we live in today. Television ownership was becoming more widespread (and they remained black and white) while the global population stood at fewer than three billion – today it is approximately 8.3 billion.
So picture a convict’s astonishment at what he witnessed on the streets following his release after an extraordinary 68 years in custody.
This was the predicament Joe Ligon encountered. In 1953 he was amongst a gang of five youths who started mugging people in an attempt to purchase alcohol, leading to the murders of two individuals, Charles Pitts and Jackson Hamm, in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
He received a life sentence without the chance of parole following his conviction on two counts of first degree murder. He was offered clemency in the 1970s but declined it because he didn’t wish to spend his life on the outside on parole.
Ligon was shocked by some aspects of the new world (Image: Juvenile-In-Justice)
Ligon wasn’t freed until 2021, at the advanced age of 82. The US Supreme Court determined that life sentences without parole for juveniles was unconstitutional, reports the Irish Mirror.
In 2016 it ruled this applied retrospectively so covered Ligon’s case as he had been 14 when the offence occurred.
When he was eventually freed after nearly seven decades in prison, he told CBS he “almost cried” as a liberated man but “broke down with a big smile on my face”.
As he strolled around with journalists, Ligon observed “those buses there they didn’t exist because they had streetcar lines”. Some of the transformations to the world came as less of a surprise as he could observe how the outside world was changing from within the prison.
He was a juvenile when he was convicted (Image: PA Dept. of Corrections)
Ligon explained: “I looked out and seen all these high buildings, but I expect to see that. They locked me up, they did, they didn’t lock my mind up.”
Upon his release, the prisoner held the record of being the longest-serving ‘juvenile lifer’ in the United States.
Ligon maintains that, while he stabbed someone, he didn’t kill either of the two men who perished.
He told CBS: “I was guilty of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. It wasn’t with the intention of hurting nobody. I didn’t murder anybody.
Ligon was released from the State Correctional Institution – Phoenix
“I’m sorry that I committed a crime. I’m sorry that someone was murdered, I’m sorry about that.”
The majority of Ligon’s immediate family has passed away during his imprisonment, though he remains thankful for the backing of his niece Valerie.
Nevertheless, he said he’s determined not to focus on what’s gone before. He said: “Ain’t nothing I can do about the past. But the only thing I can say, I just hope I have a better future.”
