Freedom arrives - four days late
Freedom, when it came, arrived four days late.
And when it did, as frustrating as the wait was, Feldon Bush was ready.
"In the end, right is right and wrong is wrong," Bush said in a telephone interview Friday.
Last Monday, the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office agreed to dismiss all charges against Bush, 34, who had served almost six years for a drug conviction based on the testimony of a disgraced police officer.
Bush was in the state prison in Chester when his mother, Ruth Miller, called with the good news.
Monday, however, passed and Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday as well, with Bush still in his cell.
Miller, 51, her son's relentless advocate since he was arrested, was beside herself and Bush said he was none too happy either.
The reason for the delay, according to state prison officials, was paperwork. The District Attorney's decision, and the sign-off by Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Glynnis Hill, did not arrive at Chester until Thursday.
Bush and Miller said Chester prison officials told them the delay was partly caused by a "lockdown" of prisoners because of the riot in a Delaware state prison where a guard was killed. Pennsylvania prison officials said that was not the case.
On Friday, at 11 a.m., Bush said he got the word that he was free. There was no advance word so that he could call for a ride to his mother's house in the lower Northeast. Not that Bush was complaining. He said he got on a bus that took him to the 69th Street Terminal in West Philadelphia and then followed his mother's directions to her house.
There he got to see the young daughter he last saw in 2009 as well as other family members and got a home-cooked meal from his mother.
"I'm just thankful I got home," Bush said.
On Monday, there's a job interview his mother helped arrange, followed by the rest of his life and getting used to living outside the walls.
Prison, Bush said, is still "tying me up inside me head."
Bush's protracted personal campaign for freedom was featured in the second part of a series, "Justice on Hold," which appeared Nov. 21 in the Inquirer and Daily News.
From the beginning, Bush maintained that he was innocent of the crack-cocaine and conspiracy charges and that his conviction rested only on an ambiguous identification by ex-Philadelphia Police Officer Christopher Hulmes.
But Hulmes' identification and reputation -- he was a cop for 19 years, 13 of them on the Narcotics Strike Force –carried the day in court and Bush was convicted and sentenced.
It was not until 2014, when the former Philadelphia City Paper, followed by the Inquirer and Daily News, began chronicling allegations about Hulmes lying against alleged drug defendants, that the veteran narcotics officer's reputation began crumbling.
In May 2015, Hulmes was arrested and charged with perjury and lying on paperwork used to arrest drug defendants. Last June, the District Attorney's Office agreed to let Hulmes, 44, enter a pretrial diversion program for first offenders after he promised not to try to get his job back.
As with other narcotics officers found to have falsified documents and testimony, the Defender Association of Philadelphia announced a review of 529 Hulmes drug cases to see if they should be vacated .
Feldon Bush was one of them.