EPSY Award For Man Who Spent 26 Years in Jail After Wrongful Conviction

Dewey Bozella of Fishkill, NY has only been free for two of the last 28 years, but he’ll be receiving a major sports honor tonight on ESPN’s ESPY Awards.

A judge overturned Bozella’s murder conviction in October of 2009, but the justice was slow in coming for the upstate man after he was convicted of robbing and killing a 92-year-old Poughkeepsie woman. He even turned down a plea deal in 1990 that would have allowed him to go free because Bozella refused to plead guilty to a crime he didn’t commit.

During his long incarceration, Bozella became a champion prison boxer at Sing Sing. And tonight, Bozella is slated to join former recipients like Nelson Mandela, Pat Tillman and Muhammed Ali in receiving the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at ESPN’s ESPY Awards in Los Angeles.

Bozella, who coaches at-risk youth, told a Poughkeepsie paper he was “honored and humbled” to be chosen and said:

“I’m just overwhelmed to be compared to the people who came before me and won this award… Getting this award has inspired me. I’ve been blessed and given a gift… When you’re given a gift, you have to give back, to help people who are in need, and there’s too many kids running the streets in Newburgh.”

The ESPY Awards will air live tonight on ESPN at 9PM Eastern.