PATERSON, N.J. — Carrying a broom and a dust pan, Ralph Lee Jr. walked down the hallway of a mental health treatment facility in Paramus, scanning the floor for litter, stopping every few steps to sweep something up.

“I come here to do a job, to do my job,” said Lee, 57, of Paterson, who spent 24 years in state prison until DNA evidence resulted in the dismissal of his murder conviction.

During much of his time in prison, Lee had worked as a janitor, cleaning the tiers where he and the other inmates lived. He said he hasn’t given much thought to the irony that he now does the same work as a free man as he did as a prisoner of the state.

“Having this job, that’s what I needed,” Lee said. “When this opportunity opened up, I was so happy.”

Struggles after release

Lee struggled when he was first released from prison in November 2017. At the time, the prosecutors were planning to conduct a new trial. Lee and his co-defendant, Eric Kelley, were free on bail, but had to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet and be home by curfew.

Ralph Lee Jr. was exonerated after spending 24 years in prison for being involved in a Paterson murder. The Innocence Project took Lee’s case and found that the DNA sample, taken at the scene, did not belong to Lee. He was eventually freed and now works as a janitor at CarePlus Workforce Solutions.

Lee had no money and his doctor said he shouldn’t get a job for a year because of the anxiety problems he developed while in prison. He moved in with his son, Quron, who was just 5 years old when Lee’s prison sentence began. Lee lived off the $150 a month he received from welfare.

“I couldn’t really do anything,” Lee said.

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To make things more difficult, the world had changed while Lee was incarcerated. He became something of a 21st century Rip Van Winkle.

Lee thought he could get a TV and just plug it in – that’s how he learned about cable. When Lee went to prison, it seemed only rich people had cellphones, which they operated from their cars. Now, suddenly, everybody walking down the street had a cellphone. So Lee got one of the “flip” models. Friends and family started sending him text messages.

“I didn’t know how to read it or nothing,” Lee said.

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Things started improving for Lee in April 2018 when authorities decided not to conduct a retrial and dropped the murder case against him and Kelley. In time, Lee was able to get his own one-bedroom apartment in Paterson with the help of a Section 8 housing voucher.

“It was kind of empty,” Lee said of his lack of furnishings when he first moved in.

Lee called his transition from 24 years in prison “a process,” saying, “It’s not easy.”

But the soft-spoken, bearded man said he doesn’t carry any bitterness over his wrongful conviction.

“Being angry wasn’t going to get me nowhere,” he said.

Finding a new job — and a new identity

Eventually, the outpatient facility where Lee was getting mental health counseling for his anxiety referred him to CarePlus WorkForce Solutions, which provides employment for people with disabilities. He started work Nov. 17, 2018. His boss praised his work ethic and attitude.

“He’s highly respected here,” said Brigitte Johnson, executive director of CarePlus Workforce Solutions, adding that he’s popular among the facility’s staff. “They all know his name. They know he’s reliable.”

Sweeping the hallway where he works as a janitor is Ralph Lee Jr. who was exonerated after spending 24 years in prison for being involved in a Paterson murder. The Innocence Project took Lee’s case and found that the DNA sample, taken at the scene, did not belong to Lee. He was eventually freed and now works as a janitor at CarePlus Workforce Solutions.

Lee starts his shift at 9 a.m. by cleaning the six bathrooms at the facility. Often, Lee gets pulled away from the bathrooms to clean up spills and accidents common in a mental health facility, said Johnson.

His boss is particularly impressed by the way Lee cleans the facility’s glass doors.

"When I see Ralph’s work, I don’t want to mess it up,” Johnson said.

Lawsuits pending

Lee said he rarely sees Kelley, his co-defendant.

The two men had separate trials and spent most of their sentences in different prisons.

“He did his time, I did mine,” Lee said.

Back in September, the two men filed federal civil rights lawsuits against the Paterson police officers – now all retired or dead – who handled the investigation that resulted in their convictions.

The complaint accuses the officers of coercing confessions from Lee and Kelley and hiding exculpatory evidence in order to make arrests in a high-profile homicide — the 1993 fatal stabbing of Tito Dante Merino, a 22-year-old Peruvian immigrant who was working at his family’s video store to pay his way through college.

The lawsuits say that even though initial witness statements indicated the killing was committed by a single man, the Paterson police focused their probe on Lee and Kelley after getting an anonymous tip. During hours of interrogation, Lee and Kelley repeatedly proclaimed their innocence, the lawsuits said.

One of the detectives punched Lee during the questioning, the lawsuits say. Another allegedly struck Kelley, the complaint says.

The two suspects were “especially susceptible to coercive tactics” because they had “serious cognitive limitations,” and they eventually signed confessions, the lawsuits say. The detectives allegedly told the two men details of the crime that had not been made public in order to make their confessions more credible, the lawsuits say.

The two men are seeking as much as $48 million in the lawsuits, which are being handled by some of the same lawyers who worked to free Lee and Kelley. The Innocence Project and Centurion Ministries, two non-profits that work to free inmates they believe were wrongly convicted, represented Lee and Kelley in getting their convictions dismissed.

The case prompted New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal last year to order a review of the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office’s case, ultimately resulting in recommendations for changes in the way county prosecutors’ office handle defendants’ requests for DNA retesting.

Grewal said the review found “no evidence of prosecutorial misconduct, bad faith litigation tactics, or violations of law.” But the review said that some parts of the case should have been handled differently. The Attorney General has not revealed exactly what those mistakes were.

“The image and interest of justice require that all sworn law enforcement officers – police and prosecutors alike — treat the long saga endured by Eric Kelley and Ralph Lee as instructive and cautionary,” Grewal said in releasing his recommendations last year.

Lee, meanwhile, said he doesn’t spend much time thinking about his wrongful conviction or the people who put him in prison. He said he tries to keep things simple and “live one day at a time.”

“Every day, you’ve got to be thankful,” Lee said. “Being free – there’s nothing else you can put on it, being free and being able to do what you want to do.”

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: New Jersey man, wrongly convicted, savors freedom in changed world