He is 42 years old now. The Philadelphia man spent 22 years locked in a maximum security prison, nearly all of it in solitary confinement.

Four months ago, he left that western Pennsylvania prison- four months after DNA evidence proved he was not the person who kidnapped, raped and murdered Linda Mae Craig of Delaware County in 1981.

That was 15 years after Yarris became the first death row inmate in the United States to request DNA testing to prove his innocence.

Since his release, he has spoken about a dozen times, including Tuesday night at Bucks County Community College in Newtown Township, before an audience of at least 50 people. He talks about his experiences and how he believes there are others like him, innocent men living on death row.

Following last week's shocking revelations of Iraqi detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, Yarris has also been asked to talk about one of his former guards - Charles Graner Jr.

Graner, a guard at the State Correctional Institution at Greene in Waynesburg, is an Army reservist who appears repeatedly in photographs showing soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company smiling and gesturing around naked, hooded Iraqis. He is also accused of hitting Iraqi prisoners.

Yarris said he has seen the atmosphere that produces people like Charles Graner, a person he said enjoyed "inflicting" rules on prisoners. Rules such as: no religious worship services, daily strip searches, leaving the cell lights on 24 hours a day, no books and no mental health services. His first two years on death row, Yarris said he was not allowed to speak.

"[Graner] was taught and trained to inflict these measures in prison," he said, adding he had many dealings with Graner during his incarcerations. "None of them was pleasant."

But he holds no bitterness toward Graner, other guards, the prosecutors who sent him to death row at age 22, or a system that kept him jailed months after DNA proved his innocence. He will not bash anyone in public. His years in prison gave him his most valuable gift - inner peace and strength.

"They've given me the greatest gift of my life," he said, adding he soon plans to travel to France and Poland to speak against the death penalty. "My life is good. I am happy. All I got is today. The biggest insult would be to come out and be bitter and angry."

He spends his time now speaking for those who can't, urging prison reform, overturning the death penalty, and that DNA evidence in exonerated death row cases be entered into the FBI data bank to find the true murders.

"I'm going to break the death penalty just to show them that I can," he said.

Yarris is the 10th person to be exonerated from death row in 2003. Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 112 people in 25 states have been exonerated from death row.

While he calls himself an ordinary person, a nobody, Yarris is anything but that, said the Rev. Jeff Garris. He is executive director of the Pennsylvania Abolitionists United Against the Death Penalty, one of the groups that co-sponsored his BCCC appearance, along with local church organizations, the Bucks County Committee Against the Death Penalty and BCCC's Human Rights Club.