Bittersweet liberty

Dwayne Dail struggles to adapt to life outside prison -- and bond with his son

LEHIGH ACRES, FLA. -- Standing before a wall of coolers at the 7-Eleven, Dwayne Dail is paralyzed. Dail stares at the rows of sparkling waters, milky coffee drinks and teas infused with fruit he has never tasted.

He spots a shiny, slender can and asks his son, Chris Michaels, if it is a beer. Chris pats his shoulder and explains it is a high-caffeine drink designed to give a blast of energy. Dail hunts for something familiar, then settles on a Diet Pepsi.

For Dail, it's another small step beyond prison. It's also a reminder that freedom can bewilder, that a life unbarred still has constraints.

In August, Dail, 39, left prison after serving 18 years for a crime he didn't commit. A 12-year-old Goldsboro girl pointed to him as the man who raped her; a jury believed her. Dail languished behind bars for half his life until DNA evidence found this year proved that another man committed the crime.

There's much Dail will never get back, never be able to forget. He went to prison labeled a child rapist and suffered the abuse that inmates unleash on those who hurt little girls. He didn't go to college, buy a house, build a career or raise his son.

Prison made the father and son strangers. In October, Chris joined Dail in southern Florida, in a quiet town where Dail spent his childhood and his family resettled over the years. Three generations of Dails now share a modest home far from the Wayne County Courthouse, where father and son were robbed of each other in 1989.

Dail is a grown man stunted at age 19. He leans on 18-year-old Chris to guide him.

"This is the world Chris grew up in and never left," Dail said. "This is a world that is completely foreign to me."

At 19, the hardest part of Dail's day was rising before dark to join his drywall crew.

It was 1987, and Dail danced his nights away at Goldsboro's nightclubs, rocking out in leather pants to Ozzy Osbourne and Rick Springfield. Dail bleached his hair blond like Billy Idol's and conspired with buddies to form a rock band.

One October day, a Goldsboro police officer came by his mother's house looking for him.

Days before, Dail had been goofing off with friends near a Goldsboro apartment complex. The 12-year-old girl saw him, froze and told her mother that Dail was the man who had crawled through her bedroom window the month before and raped her.

Dail never noticed the girl nearby whisper the words that would change his life.

Police asked to pluck his hair for crime scene tests. Dail obliged, eager for the detective to realize the girl was confused. A grand jury indicted him the following spring.

In March 1989, the Dail family crowded onto benches in a Wayne County courtroom, convinced they would take their scrawny brother home that day and put the whole misunderstanding behind them. Dail was indignant when the prosecutor drilled him on the witness stand.

He collapsed as the judge read the jury's verdict.

The judge handed down the stiffest punishment the charges allowed: back-to-back life sentences. Plus another 18 years.

Dail clutched benches and tables as deputies dragged him from the courtroom. He screamed at his sister, his mother, his father, his brothers, begging them, "Don't let them take me."

Not 10 feet away -- unknown to everyone -- Chris Michaels grew in the womb of Dail's teenage sweetheart.

* * *

Chris inherited his father's dark eyes and thick eyebrows.

As a boy, he couldn't travel far in Goldsboro without one of his dad's old buddies asking whether he was Dwayne Dail's son.

Chris would nod, say something pleasant and find an excuse to move along.