Brooklynite exonerated for murder he did not commit is adjusting to life outside bars

December 20, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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BROOKLYN — GERARD DOMOND, A NATIVE BROOKLYNITE and one of 40 people exonerated by the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Conviction Review Unit since 2014, is adjusting to life outside bars, reports CBS News. Domond spent almost 30 years in prison before being exonerated in 2020. At the time of the currently unsolved 1987 murder, he was not even in Brooklyn at all; rather, he was in Georgia visiting his girlfriend. He was awarded $13 million from the city for the wrongful conviction, and currently resides in a greenspace-surrounded home in New Jersey, with his two-year-old daughter Laila. Domond told CBS that while he is happy to be free, he struggles greatly with the trauma of his years behind bars, and is trying to adapt to a “new world.”

“Money doesn’t cure you. Money don’t do nothing for you, for the soul,” Domond said to CBS News. “You take the shackles off, but you’re still incarcerated [in your mind] because the pain, the scars, it’s never removed regardless […] It’s like time stopped at 23, and I’ll continue all this. So now, I’m back out here. It’s like trying to play catch up with a lot of what I missed out on. I grew up in jail, literally … All those decades was gone just like that.”