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Two years after winning his freedom, Alan Crotzer is once again asking the state to pay up.  He spent 24 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.  2007 was a year of firsts for Crotzer.  He got married and moved into a new home.  Chris Casquejo explains why Crotzer has no problem going back into prisons as a free man.

Hear it here: A Crotzer Family Christmas

It’s a typical Christmas Eve.  But the Crotzer family is anything but ordinary.  Alan Crotzer spent 24 Christmases behind bars for a rape he didn’t commit.

“The holidays weren’t holidays to me,” Crotzer said.  “They were blurs.  They were just simple days.”

After DNA evidence proved his innocence, Crotzer was freed in January 2006.

For the second year in a row, Alan Crotzer is asking the Florida legislature to pay him for the time he wrongfully spent behind bars.  But his real Christmas wish, they can’t give him.

“The money will surely help me build a new life for myself,” he said.

Crotzer’s mother died in 2001 while he was still in prison.  But she never wavered, pushing his innocence to whomever would listen.

“Compensation means nothing to me,” he said.  “Just give me 20 years with her.  They could keep every dime.  I just want to hug her and tell her how much I love her.”

His wife Quebella knows that his mother would be proud of one thing, his insistence on a spotless house.

“If this guy sees one spot on the wall, he’s like, what is that?  I’m like, don’t even worry about it,” she said.  “And he goes over there and wipes it down.  Nobody sees it but him.”

He now reaches out to others he believes were also wrongfully convicted, even if it means visiting them in prison.

“I got to go back,” he said.  “It’s part of my therapy.  I couldn’t deal with it if I couldn’t face it.”

But for now, Alan Crotzer will enjoy a simple thing that he was denied for so long.  A Christmas with family in his home.