Convicted of Killing a Woman He Never Met
Yarris had a troubled adolescence that stemmed from a horrific event in his childhood. When he was 7, a teenage boy beat and raped him, according to the BBC, and he suffered a head injury in the attack that left him with brain damage. As he got older, he coped with the trauma by drinking and taking drugs.
In December 1981, while high on methamphetamine, 20-year-old Yarris was arrested after a routine stop for a traffic violation led to an altercation between him and police, ending in his arrest for attempted kidnapping and murder of a police officer.
While in custody for this offense, in hopes of gaining his freedom, he told police he knew who’d committed the murder of Linda Mae Craig, a 32-year-old woman who had been raped and killed four days earlier. When the acquaintance he accused was ruled out by police, Yarris then became the prime suspect. In 1982, he was convicted of murder, rape and abduction and sentenced to death.
Searching for Answers—and a Cleared Name
In 1989, Yarris became one of Pennsylvania’s first death row inmates to demand post-conviction DNA testing to prove his innocence, per the Innocence Project. What followed was rounds of DNA testing of various pieces of evidence, all of which failed to produce conclusive results.
Over the years, Yarris watched five DNA tests come back inconclusive. He went 14 years without touching another human being and missed the funeral of his younger brother, who died of a drug overdose, the Brooklyn Rail reported.
Yarris passed his time in solitary confinement by reading books—first crime thrillers, then legal papers and textbooks, in hopes of helping his case. He also studied religion, tried to help fellow inmates who had been wrongfully convicted and wrote to penpals around the world, according to The Guardian. As the years dragged on, he eventually fell into despair.
"In 2002 I was ready to be executed and I asked to drop my legal appeals so that the execution process would be carried out,” he told the BBC.
Then, in 2003, Yarris was excluded from all biological material connected with the crime. The court vacated his conviction, making him the 140th person in the United States to be exonerated by post-conviction DNA testing—and the 13th to be exonerated from death row. However, a 1985 conviction for escape with connected charges in Florida kept him behind bars. After that sentence was reduced to time served, he was finally released in January 2004. Craig’s killer has never been identified.
Life After Death Row
In the aftermath of his exoneration, Yarris immediately began speaking out against capital punishment and advocating for others who have been wrongfully convicted. His case also ties into a larger legacy of fighting for wrongfully convicted individuals. One of Yarris’ lawyers, Christina Swarns, serves as the executive director of the Innocence Project, a non-profit first founded in 1992 that has gone on to help free or exonerate more than 250 people. The Innocence Project also has contributed to more than 250 state and federal reforms.
When the documentary The Fear of 13 came out in 2015, Yarris told the Innocence Project that he was “astounded by the many wonderful reactions” to it. Now, audiences will get to hear his story again through the stage adaptation, which began performances March 19 on Broadway. The play, directed by David Cromer, also stars Tessa Thompson as Jacki, a volunteer who visits the prison and has a series of conversations with Yarris.
“He’s a remarkable man,” Brody said of Yarris during a press conference for the play, according to New York Theatre Guide. “I feel a responsibility in telling his story faithfully. Nick manages to exude this tremendous interest in others. He’s worked tirelessly on exonerating others.”
Yarris keeps moving forward, in spite of the two decades he lost to that wrongful conviction. “I held on to my humanity, no matter what,” he told The Guardian in 2024, when Brody was performing The Fear of 13 in London. “It’s the only thing I’m proud of. In fact, I allowed death row to enhance it.”
