Norfolk, Virginia. In September 1993, the body of a 17-year-old girl was found in the Lafayette River. Her name is Sarah Wisnosky. In May 1995 a young Italian American, Derek Rocco Barnabei, Sarah’s boyfriend, was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of the girl. These are the elements of a court case that was destined not to leave a trace.
In 2000, the story becomes a world-wide affair, thanks to Radio 24, which decides to follow the last months of the life of a man sentenced to death. In that year a young Alessandro Milan, who worked in the editing of the programs of the newborn Radio 24, began to follow the case.
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It all started with an interview with Barnabei, who has been on death row for five years. He pleads innocent, the victim of a judicial conspiracy. He asks, from a prison in Virginia, to be able to have a voice that has been denied him for years. Radio 24 becomes his home. Thus began a six-month journey on Radio 24 in the Barnabei case and in the capital punishment system. Through dozens of interviews, phone calls, interviews, Alessandro Milan follows the last months of the condemned man’s life step by step. Today this story and its two protagonists – the condemned Barnabei and Alessandro Milan – has become an original podcast of Radio 24 entitled “I am free – Story of a man condemned to death”.
“For this story at the time I came to cry, thus crossing that fine line of detachment that a journalist must always maintain. – declares Milan – For 20 years I have wondered if Barnabei was really innocent, then I realized that it was not the right question to ask. However, for the innocent, or the guilty, the death penalty is the wrong answer ”.
I am free is the story of a real story. Through the audio of the time, the voices, the laughter, the cries of the protagonists, the re-enactment of two extraordinary ones directed from death row, with the narration of Alessandro Milan, the original podcast to be released on June 23 on Radio 24.it proposes a reflection on capital punishment, a world in which thousands of people are forced into silence, deprivation of humanity, loneliness, awaiting execution.