ESPN has already reclaimed the rights to make it into a documentary. It must be said that this story has everything of a successful series. Maya Moore is the main actress. The American basketball player, a true star of the prosecution, interrupted her career last year to work for the release of Jonathan Irons, a man wrongly sentenced to fifty years in prison. We are talking about a player at the top, four times winner of the WNBA with the Minnesota Lynx, MVP of the 2014 season, double Olympic and world champion with Team USA. Observers consider her to be one of the best basketball players in the history of the United States.
They met thirteen years ago
That did not prevent the young woman from putting everything on hiatus for Jonathan, nine years her senior. A man she first met in 2007, as part of a prison ministry program. She was 18 at the time and quite a relative notoriety. After forging ties of friendship, the two young people gradually fell in love. So much so that Maya makes a pretty unique decision in the history of high performance sport. To do everything possible to free Jonathan, imprisoned for a robbery and an armed assault that occurred in the suburbs of Saint-Louis. A crime for which he was sentenced to fifty years in prison in 1997. Except that he always loudly proclaimed his innocence, claiming that he had been misidentified by a witness to the incident.
After long months of struggle and legal recourse, Maya and her team of lawyers have managed to prove it. And they got his judgment overturned last March. It was not until July that Jonathan Irons finally got out of prison, after twenty-three years spent behind bars. Maya was there to greet him, of course. Moved to tears, she fell to her knees outside the Jefferson City Correctional Center, a high-security facility in rural Missouri. Before linking his fate to that of Jonathan.
A discreet wedding
“We got married,” Maya told “Good Morning America”, a very popular talk show across the Atlantic. Present by her side, her man confirmed, giving some details: “I wanted to marry her but at the same time protect her, because being in a relationship with a man in prison is extremely difficult and painful. didn’t want her to feel trapped, so she could find someone else anytime. Because it’s hard. When I went out we were in the hotel room, we were extremely tired, but still excited. I knelt down, looked up at her and said, ‘Will you marry me?’ She said yes. “
In the process, the couple organized a discreet wedding due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with masked guests and respect for social distancing. Now Maya and Jonathan use their free time to have a good time, ride a bike or play Frisbee. They also want to use their incredible history to help other wrongly convicted people in the United States. It remains to be seen whether Maya Moore will be back on the floors soon. “I hope that in the spring we will be able to take a new step, she breathes. For now, I’m trying to really breathe after this long battle, to enjoy life and to rest “.
