LOS ANGELES — Humberto Duran closed his eyes and told his mother what he'd told her so many times before: He was going to die in prison. After all these years, he was sure of it.
"No," she said, from across the visiting room table. "Have faith."
After spending his whole adult life behind bars, by 2010 Duran had finally lost hope. Since entering California prisons, he'd been shot, stabbed and beaten. He had to get a permanent catheter, developed a seizure disorder and began using a wheelchair.
He'd survived riots, fights and years in solitary confinement. He was no longer the feisty teen he'd been in 1993, when he was arrested on suspicion of an East Los Angeles gang murder he insisted he did not commit.
