Good morning. The armed robber was slim and wearing a pullover hoodie. Yutico Briley was neither. |
 | | Yutico Briley.Ruddy Roye for The New York Times |
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After Benjamin Joseph was robbed at gunpoint outside his New Orleans home one night almost nine years ago, he described his attacker to the police: a Black man with a slim build who was wearing a pullover hoodie, Joseph said. |
Eighteen hours later, the police made a curious decision. They arrested a teenager named Yutico Briley — even though he was heavyset and wearing a zip-up hoodie — while he was walking in Joseph's neighborhood. Briley was Black and carrying a gun, which was evidently enough for officers to consider him a suspect. |
From there, the case followed a course that's more common than it should be. The police and prosecutors moved aggressively, seeming to care more about securing a conviction than making sure they were convicting the right person. |
Instead of putting together a lineup that included Briley and several other men, the police brought him — and him alone — to Joseph and asked if Briley was the robber. "It seemed really unprofessional," Joseph would say later. It is also a common way to produce false identification, research has found. Sure enough, Joseph identified Briley as the robber. |
Later, investigators failed to collect evidence that could have cleared Briley, like security-camera footage and cellphone records that would have confirmed where he was when the robbery occurred. His original lawyers failed to do so, too. By the time other lawyers tried to do it, the records had been erased. |
Ultimately, a jury convicted Briley based largely on Joseph's identification, and a judge sentenced him to 60 years in prison without the possibility of parole. He had no prior violent convictions on his record. It was a virtual life sentence for a 19-year-old convicted of a single crime on extremely thin evidence. |
There are almost certainly tens of thousands of Americans who are now imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. (Several studies have suggested a nationwide wrongful conviction rate of at least 3 percent.) A disproportionate share of the wrongly convicted are Black men. |
By now, you've probably read at least a few stories about these injustices. They can be both depressing and enraging. But I encourage you to make some time today or this week to read the story of Yutico Briley. It appears in The Times Magazine, written by my colleague Emily Bazelon. It is in many ways "crushingly ordinary," as Emily says. But it is also different. |
 | | Briley hugging his mother just after being released from prison.Ruddy Roye for The New York Times |
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It's an unusually personal story for Emily, about what happened after Briley contacted her from prison and she then decided to research his case. It is also a story of what can happen when prosecutors and judges are willing to revisit old cases with open minds. |
"There are so many other Yuticos sitting in jail," Jason Williams, the New Orleans district attorney, who took office this year, told Emily. |
I want to thank you for spending time with The Morning today. Subscribers to The New York Times make this newsletter possible, and I hope you'll consider becoming one of them. You can do so here. |
 | | Eric Adams is a former police captain and a relative moderate on several key issues.James Estrin/The New York Times |
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Rich Americans are likely to enjoy more greenery in their environments compared with people in lower-income communities, a trend in cities across the country. Ian Leahy and Yaryna Serkez show the depth of the contrast. |
 | | Gwen Goldman, an honorary bat girl.Sarah Stier/Getty Images |
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Lives Lived: Elizabeth Martínez helped organize the Chicana movement, which sought to empower people, like her, who were of Mexican descent and born in the United States. She died at 95. |
 | | In "The Greatest Showman," a historically preserved mansion became an overgrown mess.20th Century Fox |
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It's not easy being greenspeople |
Though you may have never heard of the term "greenspeople," you've probably seen their work. In TV shows and movies, a greensperson is responsible for the foliage you see onscreen. They can create a tropical Vietnamese jungle in the middle of a Midwestern suburb, or a wheat field out of bundles of grass. They can make a production that's shooting in the dead of winter look like it's during spring — and vice versa. |
Spot any faux forests, fanciful estates or lush gardens in your favorite film? That's possible thanks to greenspeople. |
"It's one of those jobs where people go, 'Ohhh, I didn't even know that that exists,'" Ginny Walsh, a greensperson, said. When a movie she worked on, "Meet the Parents," wanted to shoot a fall scene in the winter, she and her crew attached fake autumn leaves, one by one, onto naked trees. |
In The Times, Robert Ito went behind the scenes of sets Walsh and others have created for "The Stepford Wives," "The Greatest Showman" and more. Check them out. — Sanam Yar, a Morning writer |
 | | Christopher Simpson for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Prop Stylist: Paige Hicks. |
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Gazpacho is perfect when it is too hot to eat but you need cold, salt and lunch at the same time. |
Mia Bloom and Sophie Moskalenko's "Pastels and Pedophiles" looks at how the QAnon conspiracy theory morphed into a political movement. |
The pangrams from yesterday's Spelling Bee were ineptly and penitently. Here is today's puzzle — or you can play online. |
Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David |
P.S. A century ago today, the Senate confirmed William Howard Taft, the ex-president, as chief justice. He remains the only person to hold both offices. |
Claire Moses, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. |
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