Rhiannon Giddens Gives Voice to Wrongfully Incarcerated People in New Video

Rhiannon Giddens is shining a spotlight on people who have been wrongly incarcerated. On Monday (October 2), the 10th annual International Wrongful Conviction Day, Giddens released the video for her song “Another Wasted Life” from her new album, You’re the One. The singer partnered with the Pennsylvania Innocence Project to feature 22 people who were incarcerated for crimes they didn’t commit, collectively serving more than 500 years of jail time.

The Pennsylvania Innocence Project is a nonprofit that operates with the mission to, “Exonerate those convicted of crimes they did not commit, to prevent innocent people from being prosecuted and convicted, and to help those wrongfully convicted transition to freedom.”

The video features Giddens walking through a dark room lit only by a single spotlight, singing the song’s stirring lyrics while surrounded by the former inmates. It’s a torture of the soul / The narrow confines of control / Thrown down the stinking hole with no hope of release / It’s just another wasted life, she sings in the background as each of the individuals stands in the spotlight against a brick wall, their name and number of years they spent incarcerated flashing across the screen.

[RELATED: Rhiannon Giddens to Drop First Solo Album in Six Years with ‘You’re the One’]

“Another Wasted Life” was inspired by Kalief Browder, a 17-year-old Black teenager who was wrongfully incarcerated in New York in 2010 after being accused of stealing a backpack filled with valuable items. He was held in solitary confinement for two years and subjected to violence by both fellow inmates and police officers. After three years in jail, he was released in 2013. Browder committed suicide in 2015 at the age of 22 after battling depression.

“I consider that he was murdered by the system,” Giddens tells American Songwriter in the September 2023 print issue. “It’s not ever going to be a fair system. That song is to highlight the amount of waste, the waste of their lives and the families’ lives who don’t get the time with their loved ones. It’s a very important song to me, and it is the largest example on this record of what I have been doing my whole career.”

All of the songs on You’re the One were written by Giddens, including the collaboration with Jason Isbell, “Yet to Be.” The album debuted inside the Top 20 on the Billboard Folk Albums chart.

Names of former inmates featured in the video and the number of years spent incarcerated:

William Johnson – 18 years

Larry Curley – 11 years

Donte Rollins – 10 years

John In – 15 years

Alfredo Domench – 18 years

Lance Felder – 15 years

David Bryan – 43 years

Stephen Lazar – 16 years

Hassan Bennett – 13 years

Chester Hollman III – 28 years

Andrew Swainson – 31 years

Termain Hicks – 19 years

Samuel Randolph – 21 years

Larry Walker – 38 years

Larry Trent Roberts – 13 years

Lafaye Gaskins – 34 years

Anthony Wright – 25 years

Edward Baker – 26 years

Marshall Hale – 33 years

Tyrone Jones – 43 years

Photo Credit: Colibri Workshop/Courtesy of Pennsylvania Innocence Project