Never give up. That’s a lesson James Bain, a Lake Wales man who was wrongly convicted of kidnapping and raping a nine-year-old boy in 1974, learned the hard way while serving 35 years in prison. Speaking on behalf of the Innocence Project of Florida at Florida Southern College in Lakeland yesterday, Bain revealed how he gained his freedom after DNA evidence proved his innocence in 2009.

Another lesson he learned was not to be bitter. “I can’t be angry or fault them. People did what they had to do and I would have done the same thing,” Bain told a captivated audience filled with many students who questioned how he coped with the injustice.