A New York man served 22 years for two murders he didn’t commit. He says prison saved his life

(CNN) — Calvin Buari parked the black Volkswagen Jetta outside the maximum-security prison he’d called home for years.

He gazed up at the hulking concrete wall of the Green Haven Correctional Facility and inhaled deeply. Only weeks before, he’d been on the other side of those walls.

But on this June 2017 visit, he wasn’t a prisoner. He was a budding entrepreneur, taking an elderly woman to visit her grandson behind bars.

The previous month Buari had walked out of the prison in Stormville, New York, a free man after years of fighting to vacate a wrongful conviction for a double homicide. He launched Ryderz Van Service — a company he describes as the “Uber for prison visits”— as soon as he got his driver’s license.

On that surreal day, his first trip back to the prison since his release, he mingled with the corrections officers and handed out business cards.

“It was like an out-of-body experience, being on the other side of that wall,” he says now. “I wanted to do something to keep family ties because I know how important that is when you’re inside.”

“That grandmother … she didn’t drive, she was elderly. And this was the only person that … (prisoner) had on the outside.”

The modest VW was a far cry from the black BMW Buari drove as a drug dealer in the Bronx in the 1990s, before he was wrongly convicted of murder. His T-shirt, pants and black fedora were a stark contrast to the flowing mink coat and matching brown hat he wore to sell crack cocaine to his customers.

But he was a free man. And he was busy trying to turn his life around.

That visit to the prison — about 90 minutes’ drive north of New York City — was the first of many as Buari’s business grew. And each day he drove to the prison, he thought of how quickly one’s freedom can vanish.

“Every time I pulled up at that prison that I just left, it was a reminder that I need to be on the righteous path,” he tells CNN. “Because if I did not, what was waiting for me was that very prison.”

A hit podcast details Buari’s fight to clear his name

Buari’s story is featured in the podcast, “The Burden: Empire on Blood,” which followed his years-long fight for justice and eventual release in May 2017 after 22 years behind bars.

The podcast launched in 2018 and has been updated with new episodes and previously unheard recordings of his phone calls from prison.

The latest episode, released this week, focuses on Buari, now 53, navigating life after incarceration. A second bonus episode will be released Wednesday. At the end of the podcast’s initial episodes, Buari had just been released and was sleeping in a van in his ex-girlfriend’s driveway as he tried to launch his rideshare business.

Former journalist Steve Fishman, who hosts the podcast, said he decided to do more episodes because he frequently gets questions about Buari.

“People still ask me, ‘What happened to Cal?’ We left him homeless and sleeping in the van and yet he was so determined (to better his life). And frankly, I was interested in what happened to Cal, too,” he says.

Fishman says he’s been “obsessed” with Buari’s case since he received a frantic phone call from him while he was in prison. A fellow prisoner, who was also wrongfully convicted and later released from prison, had shared Fishman’s number with Buari because of his work shining a light on such cases.

Buari then sent Fishman over 1,300 pages of his court transcripts and documents, and Fishman started recording their conversations with his consent in 2011. And he grew fascinated by this man who was campaigning for his freedom from a prison payphone.

Since then, Fishman has been present for Buari’s biggest moments, including the ruling to vacate his conviction and his eventual release from prison.

In 2017, the year Buari was released, the National Registry of Exonerations documented 139 prisoners who were freed after wrongful convictions, including 51 for homicide, it said.

Statistics on exonerations offer further evidence of the significant challenges African Americans face in the criminal justice system. Of the 153 prisoners exonerated in the US last year, 93 — or almost 61% — were Black.

“Judging from exonerations, innocent Black Americans are seven times more likely than white Americans to be falsely convicted of serious crimes,” the National Registry of Exonerations said in a 2022 report.

He began selling drugs as a teenager so he could buy a pair of Air Jordans

Buari was a savvy — and flashy — drug dealer. He strutted the streets in Rolex watches, gold chains and designer clothes. It was not unusual to see him decked out in Versace or Fila from head to toe, he says.

His flamboyant role as a drug dealer made him unsympathetic and an easy target for a conviction, he says. The fact that he was plying neighborhoods with drugs as then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani was cracking down on crime didn’t help either.

“At that time and that era, if police just heard drugs, they didn’t care. They felt like you belonged in prison. Sometimes I felt like I belonged in prison,” he says. “Even though I was in there for something that I didn’t do, I kind of put myself in that position because of what I did.”

Buari describes himself as an avid entrepreneur who wasted his business acumen on the wrong ventures. Ever since he was old enough to work, he’s always been his own boss. Even after his release from prison, he never considered working for someone else, he says.

Buari says he dropped out of school in 10th grade to make money after he saw his single mother struggling to pay her bills.

He identifies one particular moment that sealed his decision to start selling drugs: He desperately wanted a pair of Air Jordan sneakers, but his mother could not afford them.

Not long after he started dealing drugs, he got a pair of squeaky new Jordans. He later bought a black BMW, one of two that he owned and had nicknamed the Black Man’s Wish.

“‘Young, fresh and flashy’ is how I described myself,” Buari says. “I was young and stupid.”

Then on the night of September 10, 1992, everything changed.

Two brothers, Elijah and Salhaddin Harris, were sitting in their parked car eating Jamaican takeout when a gunman approached and sprayed it with bullets, killing both men.

The crime happened near the corner of East 213th St. and Bronxwood Avenue — a hotspot for crack deals and gang activity in the Bronx back then, Fishman says. It was also the block where Buari sold his drugs.

In an effort to overthrow Buari as the corner’s main crack dealer, his rivals testified in court that they saw him killing the brothers, Fishman says.

Prosecutors, eager to get Buari off the street, offered him a deal: a guilty plea in exchange for three years in prison. He turned them down.

In October 1995, a Bronx Supreme Court jury convicted him of two counts of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to 50 years to life in prison.

Other than the rival drug dealers’ false testimony, there was no evidence tying Buari to the crime, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

Another prisoner confesses to the killings

For the first few years after his conviction, a disillusioned Buari sold drugs in prison and was moved from one facility to another, he says.

But in the early 2000s, he realized he was going to die in prison if he didn’t change his life. He started to fight for his freedom, reaching out to Fishman and activists involved in wrongful conviction cases. He also sent letters to scores of lawyers, he says.

Buari says the internet gave him access to information while incarcerated. He earned his GED online in 2007 and started taking virtual courses in criminal law.

“My case gave me an incentive to get in the law books, to get my paralegal certificate, to start taking legal courses in prison, to learn the law, to find out how I could fight and come home,” he says.

Then things started looking up — although the wheels of justice turned slowly.

In 2003, another Bronx drug dealer who was in prison after being found guilty of an unrelated murder confessed that he had killed the brothers. But he later recanted, and the courts declined to toss Buari’s conviction.

The case stalled for several years as Buari struggled to find lawyers to represent him. Then Myron Beldock, the legendary civil rights attorney, signed on. Beldock had helped exonerate other high-profile clients, including boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter and the Central Park Five.

But after filing a motion to vacate Buari’s sentence, Beldock died in 2016 — again throwing the case in limbo. Finally attorney Oscar Michelen, who’d worked with Beldock on some cases, agreed to represent Buari.

His fight for justice got new momentum when three new witnesses testified at a hearing in 2017. Two of them identified the other drug dealer as the shooter, while a third said she was with Buari down the street when they heard the gunshots. She said she didn’t know Buari had been convicted of the killings until she saw a news story about the case years later.

On May 8, 2017, Buari walked out of prison.

“I’ll never forget that moment. It felt surreal,” he says. “I had been in prison since I was 24. And now, prison was no longer my destiny.”

Seven years later, he’s on a path to redemption

Since his release from prison, Buari has been a busy man. He sued the city and state and won millions of dollars in settlements.

He’s invested in real estate in New York and Texas, according to property records, and also owns a million-dollar house in a Houston suburb, where he spends most of his time.

“As a drug dealer, he was good at managing people. He was good at marketing, good at sales, good at distribution. He once told me that his goal was to be a legitimate millionaire,” Fishman says.

That dream has come true. In 2021, Buari settled with New York City for $4 million after he sued the city and several law enforcement officials, seeking unspecified damages. The year before, he received a $3.75 million settlement from New York state, Michelen told CNN.

Buari now employs drivers for his rideshare company, which he describes as a door-to-door service that takes relatives to visit inmates at prisons throughout suburban New York and New Jersey.

Buari says he’s still a work in progress and that he strives to be a better man every day. Part of that involves thinking about the lives and neighborhoods he destroyed as a drug dealer, he says.

“I pray that a lot of those people are well and can find it in their hearts to forgive me,” he says. “I once was completely lost … I’m still not completely found, but today I find grace in my actions, not my words.”

He believes he’d be dead today if he had remained on the streets.

“Going to prison saved my life. It had the butterfly effect on me. Before I went to prison, I was like the caterpillar. Then when I was in prison, I had to transform my life and try to do more productive things. I had to see the potential in myself,” he says. “That was my cocoon phase. And now that I’m out, I feel like I’m in the butterfly phase.”

His redemption journey is far from over, he says. It’s just beginning.

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