Mike Tyson at 60: New Netflix Documentary Revisits the Boxing Legend’s Indiana Prison 3 Years -- Claims His Innocence

Tyson Talks to Fox Viewers Tonight and Makes News, like HE does.

By Hoosier Enquirer Senior Staff Writer Gregg Smith

New York— Mike Tyson has been heavyweight champion of the world, one of the most famous athletes on earth, a convicted felon, a prisoner in Indiana, a controversial comeback fighter and, more recently, a 60-year-old celebrity looking back at a life he acknowledges was consumed by chaos.

Tonight he appeared on Jesse Watters on Fox News Channel.

Now Netflix is putting all of it on screen.

“TYSON,” a four-part documentary series scheduled to premiere Oct. 13, will examine the extraordinary rise, collapse and reinvention of the former undisputed heavyweight champion. For Hoosiers, however, one chapter has a particularly strong Indiana connection: Tyson spent approximately three years incarcerated in the Indiana Department of Correction following his 1992 rape conviction in Indianapolis.

Tyson was convicted on Feb. 10, 1992, following a highly publicized trial arising from his encounter with Desiree Washington, an 18-year-old Miss Black America contestant, in Indianapolis the previous summer. He received a 10-year sentence, with four years suspended, and ultimately served approximately three years at the Indiana Youth Center in Plainfield before his March 25, 1995, release. He has discussed his daily workouts while incarcerated in the Indiana Department of Correction.

Tyson maintained his innocence and pursued appeals, but his conviction survived review in both state and federal courts. The Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his federal habeas challenge in 1995.

That makes Indiana more than a passing location in the Tyson story. Some of the most consequential years of his life occurred behind prison walls just west of Indianapolis.

From World Champion to Indiana Inmate

Tyson's fall had been extraordinary. He became heavyweight champion at only 20 and was the undisputed heavyweight champion from 1987 until 1990. By 1992, one of the most recognizable athletes in the world was entering an Indiana correctional facility as an inmate.

Contemporary reports provide an unusual glimpse of his life there.

In April 1992, the Indiana Department of Correction announced that Tyson had been assigned a prison job paying 65 cents a day. He worked afternoons in recreation, handling duties ranging from maintenance to keeping track of equipment issued to prisoners.

He also had a now locally famous cellmate from South Bend, a man who had run for mayor against Joe Kernan only to later find himself incarcerated.

UPI reported at the time that Tyson shared a roughly 12-by-8-foot cell with another offender, although an Indiana Department of Correction spokesman declined to identify that inmate publicly. HE will identify him here: the Rev. Mario Sims.

Sims has said that, as a man of Christian conviction and principle, he turned down a substantial sum of money rather than convert to Islam. His community Christian church, Doulos Chapel, located in inner-city South Bend, has never sought or received a donation from “Iron Mike” Tyson, based on HE's research and original reporting.

By the time Tyson walked out of the Plainfield institution on March 25, 1995, prison officials described him as a relatively quiet inmate who largely kept to himself. He had served about half of the six-year executed portion of his sentence after receiving credit that shortened his incarceration.

His years in Indiana also coincided with a religious transformation. Tyson converted to Islam while incarcerated, one of several changes that would become part of the complicated public narrative surrounding his post-prison life.

The Mario Sims Connection

The Indiana chapter also intersects with another name familiar to longtime Hoosier Enquirer readers: Rev. Mario Sims a former South Bend mayorial candidate who challenged Joseph Kernan only to be arrested and incarcerated in a rigged case of injustice. There is no evidence available at this time the Tyson documentary even mentions Sims and his Christian religious conviction, refusing even for a large sum of money from Tyson to convert to Islam during that time.

Hoosier Enquirer has previously reported that Sims was a prison cellmate of Tyson. Sims later became involved in an entirely unrelated Indiana attorney-disciplinary controversy as a potential witness in proceedings involving former attorney Doug Bernacchi. Sims recently signed a sworn affidavit concerning the Bernacchi disciplinary case and Bernacchi's professional relationship with Sims' paralegal firm.

Bernacchi has maintained that he was wrongly disciplined and that his very limited association with Sims and Sims' paralegal operation for some reason played a significant role in the disciplinary case against him. Sims was never allowed to testify, which would have blown up Indiana's false narative.

Those remain Bernacchi's allegations and should be distinguished from the findings made in the disciplinary proceeding. Sim's complete verbatim affidavit will be published by HE tomorrow.

Sims, like Tyson, has maintained his innocence in the criminal case that resulted in his incarceration. Sims has alleged that he was framed by South Bend Police Department homicide officer Tim Corbett. HE has previously reported extensively on Sims' case, and those stories appear below as related articles for readers who want to revisit that history.

There is an important evidentiary qualification. Contemporary reporting from 1992 confirms that Tyson had a cellmate, but the Indiana Department of Correction declined at the time to identify that person.

Hoosier Enquirer has establishing that Sims was Tyson's cellmate throughout Tyson's approximately three-year incarceration.

Tyson Looks Back at 60

Netflix describes its new documentary as an “unflinching” examination of Tyson's life rather than simply another celebration of his boxing career. The four hour-long episodes are directed by Floyd Russ and include interviews with Tyson, family members and people close to him.

Tyson appears willing to confront some of the darkness himself. In promoting the documentary, he has described his younger life as one dominated by chaos and said that telling his story requires acknowledging both the good and the bad rather than casting himself as its hero.

That is particularly significant when discussing the Indianapolis case. Tyson's fame and subsequent reinvention don't erase the conviction that sent him to an Indiana prison, just as the conviction doesn't erase his historical significance as one of boxing's most extraordinary athletes.

His legal challenges also became part of Indiana jurisprudence. Indiana appellate courts considered his conviction, and his subsequent federal habeas case reached the Seventh Circuit. The federal appellate court ultimately left the conviction intact.

Indiana's Place in the Tyson Story

Tyson's three years in Plainfield are sometimes reduced to a sentence or two in accounts of his remarkable life: conviction, prison, release, comeback.

For Indiana, they represent considerably more. The most famous boxer in the world went from multimillion-dollar prize fights to a 65-cent-a-day prison job. He lived under Indiana Department of Correction rules, shared a small cell with another prisoner and eventually walked through the gates in Plainfield to begin one of sports history's most scrutinized comeback attempts.

Thirty-one years after that release, Tyson is 60 and again asking the public to examine the person behind the mythology. When “TYSON” premieres Oct. 13, viewers will see the champion, the celebrity and the controversies that followed him for decades. Hoosiers will also recognize something else: For three consequential years, the Mike Tyson story was an Indiana story.

Tyson's Faith Today

HE could find no reliable evidence that Tyson has disavowed Islam and formally returned to the Christian faith of his New York youth. Tyson has continued to speak publicly about God, faith and mortality, but those statements alone should not be interpreted as evidence that he has converted from Islam back to Christianity.

Tyson was convicted on Feb. 10, 1992, following a highly publicized trial arising from his encounter with Desiree Washington, an 18-year-old Miss Black America contestant, in Indianapolis the previous summer. He received a 10-year sentence with four years suspended and ultimately served approximately three years at the Indiana Youth Center in Plainfield before his March 25, 1995, release. He discussed his daily workouts in the IDOC.

Tyson maintained his innocence and pursued appeals, but his conviction survived review in both state and federal courts. The Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his federal habeas challenge in 1995.

That makes Indiana more than a passing location in the Tyson story. Some of the most consequential years of his life occurred behind prison walls just miles west of Indianapolis.

When “TYSON” premieres Oct. 13, viewers will see the champion, the celebrity and the controversies that followed him for decades. Hoosiers will also recognize something else.

For three consequential years, the Mike Tyson story was an Indiana story.

HE could not find proof that Tyson has disavowed Islam and returned to his Christian roots in New York as a youth as claimed by a source for this article.