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Credit: Charlie Perlman

The Lindsay Room was stunned into silence listening to Fernando Bermudez's tale. Students across all grades piled in to hear the lessons learned from his struggle for innocence.

“Cops were heroes to me,” said Fernando Bermudez to a packed crowd of Upper School students, Middle School students, and faculty in the Lindsay Room.

That was before he spent over eighteen years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. 

Bermudez was speaking for an event organized by History teacher Michael Bass’s American Law class in collaboration with the Innocence Project to bring in Bermudez to tell his story during a History Roundtable at lunchtime. Bermudez brought his brother Danny to aid him in telling his journey of wrongful incarceration. 

“I thought the roundtable was really amazing and especially [Fernando] bringing his brother,” said senior Megan Hopkins. “It gave it a cool second-hand perspective, and you got to see how his brother and his family were victims of the failures of the criminal justice system, too.”

A 21-year-old Fernando Bermudez was considering attending medical school when his life changed forever. The Washington Heights native was celebrating on Aug 4, 1991 with friends and family when he was accused of murdering Raymond Blunt. 

A prior arrest on a marijuana charge had gotten Bermudez’s picture and information into the police’s database. When the death of Blunt occurred, police pulled Bermudez into the case because he was also Hispanic and fit a similar description.  

When supposed witnesses were brought in, they were subject to procedures that created bias in identifying the culprit. Some of the witnesses after the trial even admitted to seeing mugshots of Bermudez prior to identifying him in the lineup. It was only after Bermudez was convicted that the witnesses spoke out about the coercion they suffered from law enforcement. The fact of the matter is that the truth about why the witnesses were forced to make false confessions may never surface.    

In prison, Bermudez began to educate himself on law and work on his case. He wrote to different lawyers and news outlets to highlight his case. Behind bars, his case began to get national attention. One viewer was his future wife, who then had children with Bermudez. The fact that Bermudez now had an extended family drove him to work on his release even more relentlessly.  

“I think it’s inspirational, to say the least,” said senior Ronen Fleck. “He took a positive attitude during a very horrible situation, and it paid off. You could tell that he was an extremely intelligent guy: his speech was extremely moving, and he articulated his story very well.”

Fernando Bermudez got his life back on track when he was released from prison after proving his innocence. He started walking his daughter to school, writing his own book about his story, and advocating for other wrongfully incarcerated individuals. 

After the roundtable, Bermudez met with one section of Mr. Bass’s American Law class last period. In the class, students were able to ask questions they couldn’t during the roundtable. The students applied their newfound legal system knowledge to ask in-depth questions about Bermudez’s case. The class watched the 2012 Ken Burns documentary “The Central Park Five” to prepare for the discussion. Although it isn’t Bermudez’s case, it highlights similar themes of profiling, twisted confessions, and faults in the legal system.  

“I think the documentary was helpful and I really enjoyed it,” said senior American Law student Felix Saujet. “It gave us a good introduction to Fernando’s case by giving us good background information about how the criminal justice system can be unfair at times.”

Through such trials and tribulations, Bermudez uses his time now to teach others about his story and the value of life outside bars. 

“This is what I devote my life to now after 18 years in prison,” Bermudez said. “Freedom is something that should never taken for granted and should be watered through vigilance and hard won and never taken for granted.”