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WRITING GUIDE for Friends and Family of the Norfolk Four

1. Your letter should open by saying that you are writing to support the Clemency Petition of Joseph Jesse Dick, Jr., Derek Elliot Tice, and Danial J. Williams. You believe that they are innocent and should be set free.

2. Then be sure to include the following points. The items with an arrow beside them are facts that you can include in your letter, but you do not have to include all of them.

Why you feel these men should be released. Some reasons might be:

They are innocent.
There is no evidence to connect them to this horrible crime.
They were coerced into supplying false confessions, even though they were actually innocent.
None of these men’s original “confessions” match any of the details of the crime because they made things up – they weren’t the murderer, so they didn’t know what the crime scene looked like.
The detective who forced these men to confess has a history of forcing innocent young men to confess to crimes they did not commit.
A man has confessed to the crime and his DNA matches the evidence from the crime scene. His confession has details that only the real murderer could have known, and he insists that he committed this crime alone.

3. Finish up by thanking the Governor for reading your letter, remind him that these men are innocent, and ask him for their freedom so they can return to their families and begin normal lives.