In January of this year, WNBA star Maya Moore Irons announced she would be formally retiring from basketball. She left the sport, following an extended break that began in 2019, as one of its most decorated players. In 2017, Moore Irons helped the Minnesota Lynx, her team since 2011, win its fourth WNBA title in seven years, and she counts two Olympic gold medals, six All-Star selections, and a string of MVP titles among her achievements. The star had been widely expected to return to the game, and her permanent departure came as a shock.
But off the court, the wrongful imprisonment of a man named Jonathan Irons had long hung over Moore Irons’s head like a dark cloud. In 1997, at the age of 16, Irons was arrested for…
