An Opera for the Wrongfully Convicted

Nancy Smith, another of the exonerated, was a Head Start bus driver in Lorain who spent nearly fifteen years in prison after being convicted of molesting children she was driving to day care. After the verdict, the children’s parents sued the federal government, which funds Head Start, and won large settlements. Some years later, it was alleged that the children who testified had been coached on what to say; one of the parents began coaching her granddaughter in a similar scam, and the girl’s father called the O.I.P. Nancy Smith told the visitor how moved she was that the creators of the opera cared about her story. She recently retired from grooming dogs—including, as it happens, the dog of one of the detectives on her case.