In September 2020, after spending twenty-nine years in California prisons, Carlos Muñoz won parole. There was a celebration planned at his nephew’s house in Burbank; his family was coming from all over.

When he was seventeen, Muñoz had been found guilty of a gang killing, despite the fact that he said he hadn’t done it and eight people corroborated his alibi. The damning evidence: two statements from witnesses who both recanted before the trial.

Convicted of second-degree murder, Muñoz had grown up inside prison: got his GED, got his associate degree, became a certified alcohol and drug abuse counselor and a mentor to the men around him. He sorted through the violence of his youth and its lasting trauma. Growing up with a single mother on Hollywood Boulevard in the ’80s and ’90s, gang conflict had felt inescapable. At seventeen, Muñoz thought the system that put him away was probably right to do so. Over time, he realized that he didn’t actually believe in that system anymore, nor its ability to dictate the course of his life.