PHILADELPHIA Freed inmate revels in freedom, solitude

He met a nephew for the first time and revels in taking a cup of tea outside.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- After spending two decades in an isolation cell just big enough for a cot and a toilet, former death-row prisoner Nicholas Yarris described his first weekend of freedom Tuesday as a marvel of sounds and silence, family reunions and precious solitude.
Yarris, the first death-row inmate to be exonerated by DNA evidence in Pennsylvania, was set free Friday after a long battle to prove he was innocent of the rape and murder of a suburban Philadelphia woman.
Decked out in a new gray suit and matching fedora, Yarris told reporters gathered at his lawyers' office that the past few days have been ones of constant "sensory overload" after years of deprivation.
Technological innovation
In a few short days he has been introduced to two decades of technological innovation. He's been bombarded by the smells of home. He's met relatives he never knew, like a 6-year-old nephew who spent part of the weekend showing him how to play home video games, which had only just been invented when Yarris was jailed in 1982.
"That is a wonder -- the sound of children," said Yarris, 42.
Yet, even after so long in isolation, Yarris said he is reveling most in his newfound ability to be alone.
On death row, he explained, prisoners are watched around the clock. There is a constant murmur from prisoners jammed into close quarters -- a noise he described as "the silence of madness."
Favorite experience
Yarris said one of his favorite experiences of freedom so far was taking a cup of tea outside, alone, to look at the moon.
In prison, he said, "you don't have any sense of solitude and quietness like that."
Yarris' 1983 conviction was overturned last summer when DNA tests unavailable in the 1980s proved that genetic material found under the victim's fingernails, on her undergarments and in a pair of gloves worn by the killer belonged to another man.
He remained jailed for months more -- first while prosecutors decided whether to retry the case, and then while his lawyers sought a recalculation of prison terms he received in Florida for crimes he committed there as a fugitive after escaping from his jailers in 1985 while his murder case was on appeal.
Now, Yarris said he is trying to figure out how to best use his freedom.
Already, he says, he is a better man than when he was arrested. At the time, Yarris had compiled a violent criminal history. He continued the pattern after his prison escape, going on a crime spree that included armed robbery.
"I was so flawed. I was a 20-year-old junkie. I had all these troubles in my head," he said.
Yarris said he hopes to become a voice for the people he left behind on death row.
He and his attorneys called for a moratorium on the death penalty Tuesday.
Yarris said he is convinced that at least one other death-row prisoner he served time with is innocent, and expressed little confidence in the system that imprisoned him for more than half his life.
"If I am not an example of how we need to do a better job of how we handle our penal system, then there's not one out there," he said.