Good People Doing Good Things — Ginny Schrappen

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, Good people doing good things, History, Law and justice, Social commentary

This week’s good people post is a bit different than my usual fare, but it’s a story that touched my heart, even brought a tear to my eye, and I hope you will find it inspiring, too.

Ginny Schrappen was in her mid-fifties back in 1998 when one day her church deacon handed her a letter.  It was from a man in prison who was just hoping to find someone … anyone … who would take a few minutes to write back to him.  Ginny did write back and their letter-writing continued for 25 years until earlier this month when Ginny finally got to meet her long-term pen pal face-to-face, hug-to-hug.

Ginny’s pen pal is Lamar Johnson, a man who was wrongfully convicted in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1994.  Johnson had been convicted of murder for the October 1994 killing of Marcus Boyd, who was shot dead on his front porch by two masked men. Police and prosecutors claimed Johnson gunned Boyd down during a dispute over drug money, despite the fact that he said he was not home at the time and despite the fact there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime scene.

Since that day in 1998 when Ginny penned the first letter, she and Lamar have continued to correspond regularly.  Eventually, Johnson’s case came to the attention of the Midwest Innocence Project and, long story short, they were able to prove that prosecutors had manipulated evidence, and along with the confession of another person, Lamar Johnson’s sentence was finally vacated after 28 years of his life spent in prison.

And just last week, he went to visit the pen pal with whom he had corresponded for a quarter of a century … take a look  …

Ginny says that from the very first letter she believed he was innocent of the murder, and she never lost faith in him, never stopped writing.  She truly was a “rainbow in his cloud.”  I think she is absolutely a ‘good people’, don’t you?

37 thoughts on “Good People Doing Good Things — Ginny Schrappen”

    • Thanks, Keith! Yes, I think maybe her letters were the thing that kept him going all those years! We never know, I think, when we are being that rainbow in someone’s cloud.

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  4. Unbelievable, and sadly true! A 49yr old human spent 28yrs of his life for a crime he didn‘t commit. What a tragedy. And how very wonderful that he had that ‚rock‘ of faith in his life. And a special Thank You to Ginny who believed in him from their very first exchange.
    I have a friend who wrote to a man who was sitting in a prison in Texas and who always claimed to be innocent. Right until the hour he got executed. Thanks to her I also corresponded with that man and getting to know his story as well as the support of his family, I too was convinced that he was just ‚walking at the wrong side of the road at the wrong moment‘. But none of the help and Defense offered to him made the execution order turned down. I still hope that he was able to forgive those who did probably wrong him.

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    • Exactly! His wrongful conviction was horrible and he lost 28 years of his life that he can never get back. But I know he was thankful for Ginny who never stopped believing in his innocence, never stopped writing or caring. Years ago, I took a class under the Innocence Project, an organization that helps those wrongfully convicted prove their cases. It was then that I realized how terribly wrong executions and the death penalty are, for there are many who have spent decades paying the price for a crime they didn’t commit. How much worse if one is executed for a crime he/she did not commit?

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    • It happens more often than we think. And this is why I am entirely against the death penalty. It is unconscionable that it took them 28 years to finally admit they made a mistake, and even after another man confessed, the District Attorney’s office wanted to keep Lamar in prison!

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      • Unbelievable, on what grounds?
        Do they have to pay recompensation to people who were falsely imprisoned?
        They do in Denmark, and I have recently learned that those recompensation payments to that kind of victims are a large part of the police department’s costs. They just do sloppy investigations to close cases quickly, same as in the US, I guess. I just thought things were better in Denmark. Fortunately we don’t have the death penalty, non of the European Union member states does. I think on the European continent it is only Belarus that still has it.

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        • Grounds? None. Just that they did not want to admit to having made a mistake, as best I can tell.

          There are cases in which the government must compensate those who were wrongly convicted for the years of their life they lost, but for some reason, I read that Mr. Johnson would not likely be eligible. No idea why! We should not have the death penalty here, but more and more the Republicans are trying to not only keep, but expand it. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr …

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            • Yes, that is what they claim, and I suppose that by their definition of Christianity, they are. They define it as a white, straight, male-dominated society where everyone fits perfectly into the same box, and those who dare to be different must be banished. I’m not a Christian, but what little I know about the religion is not the bigoted, cruel, exclusionary religion that too many claim is Christianity today.

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              • Christ himself was a Jew and not a so-called Caucasian. And he did not exclude anybody. So, I get the feeling that these so-called Christians never read the New Testament, which is the book about Christianity. The Old Testament is about the Jewish belief.

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                • When I listen to their rhetoric, hear them blatantly say that white people are superior, that only Christians deserve freedom, that women are sub-standard beings, the word that comes to mind is “hypocrisy”. Sadly, the ones who believe that way are growing in number in this country, and are determined to force the government to bend to their will, to impose their ‘values’ on us all.

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                  • That’s worse than ISIS or these people from Afghanistan, Taliban. They seem to forget that Christ’s mother was a woman too, and she is revered all over the globe. It would be good if women would refuse to have sex with men who think that way and tell them that they only accept immaculate conception.
                    I just read that 2 thirds of the world population is Chinese and Indian … I guess that would make white supremacists squirm. These people are not hypocrites but also very, very stupid.

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                    • You make an excellent point … if 2/3 of the world’s population is Chinese and Indian … then those white people who think they are the “chosen ones”, the only ones deserving of life, are seriously in the minority! Yes, stupidity abounds these days, doesn’t it?

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  6. This is a touching story, Jill. You read about these wrongful convictions from time to time and your heart just aches thinking of the life wasted in prison for something you didn’t do. This woman was a rainbow in this person’s life for sure.

    I can’t see the video in Canada but will try to find it elsewhere. Happy Wednesday!

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    • Yes, I took a graduate class taught by the Innocence Project and was amazed to learn how many wrongful convictions actually happen here! That was when I decided that there should NOT be a death penalty ever, for it’s almost a certainty that someday we will execute an innocent person. Yes, Ginny surely was his rainbow! I’m sorry you couldn’t view the video, but if you Google her name, you will find several options and hopefully can view one, for the video was the best part of it … brought a tear to my eye for sure!

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    • Indeed she is, and so is Lamar in my book, for he doesn’t appear to be bitter or want retaliation for the 28 years of his life that were basically stolen, he’s just trying to pick up the pieces and move on.
      Cwtch

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