Between them, Jimmy Landano and Joyce Ann brown spent more than 30 years in prison for crimes they didn't commit. They'd still be there if it hadn't been for Jim McCloskey, the man the Los Angeles Times has called "one of the nation's best detectives." He's probably the only one who's also an ordained minister.

Back when he was a successful 37 year-old businessman, McCloskey heard the call to the clergy. He abandoned his career to enter Princeton Divinity School. As part of his training, McCloskey counseled prison inmates, among them a lifer named Chiefie De Los Santos. After listening for months to Chiefie protestations that he'd been railroaded by a lying jail house witness, McCloskey finally promised to take a year off from his studies and look into the case. At the end of the year, McCloskey went back to school, but kept working on the case; he was sure Chiefie was innocent. After three years of hard work, McCloskey was able to prove not only that Chiefie hadn't done the deed, but also that the prosecutor had known all along that his witness was lying.

When McCloskey forced the state to reopen the case, Chiefie was freed. By then a seminary graduate, McCloskey was so charged up by this success that he founded "Centurion Ministries," named for the Roman centurion who said at Christ's crucifixion, "Surely this man is innocent." The ministry serves a unique congregation--people unjustly imprisoned.

McCloskey uses patience, perseverance, common sense and hard work to dig up sloppy casework, lying witnesses and suppressed evidence. He can't count on any help from police and district attorneys--they're not eager to have their mistakes and "shortcuts" exposed. McCloskey visits witnesses again and again until they open up and admit the truth. "They all want to tell the truth," he says. "It's just a wrestling match between their desire to tell the truth and their fear. I'm asking these people to do something I don't even know if I'd have the courage to do." McCloskey has a good deal of respect and affection for these people he puts on a very hot spot; he spends a lot of time with them, easing them into doing the right thing, time he says police and attorneys rarely invest.

Not every Centurion legal triumph has a happy ending. McCloskey's clients have had their lives torn apart by the cruel years in prison. Some, like Landano and Brown, bounce back, finding good jobs and personal happiness. But a few early clients, including Chiefie, returned to jail--though at least they were actually guilty of the later charges. McCloskey says, "Chiefie changed my life, but unfortunately I didn't change his."

After achieving the releases of eight innocent prisoners, Centurion Ministries is besieged with calls for help. Each time a victory is announced, one staff member told us, "We're flooded with more sad cases, more crying mothers."

With so many calls for help, cases are chosen carefully. McCloskey and his investigators are currently working for 11 defendants he believes were wrongly convicted of murder in cases across the U.S. and Canada. McCloskey only takes cases in which innocent people are serving life terms or death sentences. And once he takes a case, he sticks with it until the end; his longest case took him five years. If, however, he becomes convinced at any point that the client is lying, he drops the case.

This ministry is a far cry from the suburban church McCloskey once seemed destined for. Instead of chatting with church ladies and gentlemen over tea, he spends his time with felons, perjurers and recalcitrant cops in dingy prisons, courthouses and evidence rooms across the country. Grants and donations for Centurion are alway slim and sometimes non-existent; McCloskey has foregone a lot of paychecks. And McCloskey is a happy man. "You have to enjoy it, to feel a special calling and have it fit your human peculiarities," he says. "This work fits me like a hand in a glove."

--Lynn Willeford