Eddie Bolden is greeted by friends and family as he walks out of Cook County Jail a free man after spending 22 years in prison for a crime he did not commit Tuesday, April 19, 2016, in Chicago. A Cook County judge threw out murder convictions against Bolden, the fatal shooting of two men in 1994, and prosecutors declined to retry him. Bolden was 46 years old at the time of his release. “When I stepped outside…there’s a difference between stepping out on a prison yard and seeing daylight and stepping outside outside. And I stepped outside and it’s…I still can’t explain it. It was like I stepped into a whole new world for real,” he said, one year later in April 2017. At his 1996 trial, a county jury convicted Bolden based on the testimony of Clifford Frazier, who was wounded in the shooting in the Woodlawn neighborhood of Chicago. Frazier’s brother, Derrick, and another man were killed.

Eddie Bolden is overcome with emotion, placing a hand over his mouth, as he greeted by friends and family as he walks out of Cook County Jail a free man after spending 22 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Private investigator Susan Carlson worked with Bolden and his family and found key alibi witnesses who were overlooked at the original trial and who ultimately lead to his release. The witnesses said Bolden was in a restaurant playing a Pac-Man arcade game at the time of the shooting.

Bolden sits with his two sons, Dominique Bolden, left, then 22, and Antonio Johnson, right, then 24, as he and his family celebrate his release from prison at Giordono’s Pizza in Chicago. “That was the first time I got to hug them as men outside of the prison wall. It wasn’t the same dry greeting that I got in prison, but they were actually happy. Actually happy,” he said, one year later in April 2017.

Bolden’s Chicago Police Department booking mugshot from February 27, 1994. He spent almost half of his life behind bars.

Bolden enters a Blue Line station to catch a train home from the Loop after work Monday, May 8, 2017, in Chicago. “Actually, I just stopped looking at the footage about two weeks ago,” he said, referring to news coverage of him walking out of Cook County Jail to a crowd of friends and family. “For a long time I would wake up and just look at it, and I’d tell myself, ‘It’s real. You’re out of jail.’”

With tears in his eyes, Bolden watches the graduation of his son Dominique, less than a week after he was released from prison after 22 years, at Goshen College Sunday, April 24, 2016, in Goshen, Ind. Dominique was less than a year old when Bolden was sentenced to life in prison for a double murder he did not commit. “I was proud of him and at the same time, I felt bad because I honestly, I felt like I didn’t help get him there because I wasn’t there with him, you know, throughout his life. I didn’t realize the effect that I had on him simply through the letters and visits and phone calls,” said Bolden.

Bolden puts an arm around Dominique during graduation at Goshen College in Indiana. It wasn’t until he was around seven, he said, that he realized his father was in prison, although he didn’t understand the seriousness of the situation until he got older. Bolden was able to call him about once a week and Dominique could visit once a month. They wrote letters back and forth. “Every time we spoke on the phone, every time we went to visit him, we just had those talks about staying out of trouble, staying out of the streets, ‘make sure you finish college…’ Just trying to keep me on the right path.”

Dominique, left, and Antonio hold up a photo of Dominique as a young child, given to him by his father, during graduation at Goshen College Sunday, April 24, 2016, in Goshen, Ind. In a graduation card containing the photo Bolden wrote to his son, “You’re a born fighter!”

Bolden plays basketball with his son Dominique in the gym of the charter school where Dominque is a dean of discipline, Friday, August 26, 2016, in Chicago. “I kind of want to do the same thing for the students because some of them are growing up and they got it a lot worse than I had it. And they don’t necessarily have the figure there to give them advice or steer them on the right path, so that’s what I want to do for them. What he did for me,” said Dominique.

His first time in a hotel after 22 years, Bolden struggles to work the television in his room while attending a conference held by The Innocence Project, a non-profit legal organization committed to exonerating wrongly convicted people, Saturday, April 30, 2016, in Springfield, Ill.

Bolden and his son Antonio string lights on a Christmas tree at his aunt Brenda Lee’s house Saturday, Dec. 10, 2016, in a western suburb of Chicago. Bolden is a free man now but won’t always be around. He wants to help his children be there for each other and lead fulfilling lives, even as he contemplates what happiness means to a man who was deprived of it for 22 years. “What makes me happy may seem trivial to somebody else. I’m happy just to walk out of that door,” he said. “But I want to help my children find happiness, whatever they think it is.”

Watching his teammates, Bolden stands against a fence during a softball game with the Riley Safer Holmes & Cancila law firm in Grant Park Monday, May 8, 2017, in Chicago. Attorneys at the firm worked on his case for years and now employ him as a clerk. A year after his release, Bolden said it doesn’t feel like he’s been out so long, but that looking back, he’s grown a lot. “I’m not angry. I just want justice. You know, I want them to acknowledge what they did to me. They never will. But that’s, I would appreciate it – if not me, than somebody that was wronged.”