Brevard County Resident Bill Dillon was exonerated in 2008 after spending 27 years in prison. Now he's dedicating his life to singing.

His songs are not that of love or heartbreak but moving lyrics of what Dillon calls a 27-year hell.

"Just singing at nighttime when you're all by yourself in a cell is real soothing."

Bill Dillon was wrongly convicted for murder in 1981. At 22 years old, he was sentenced to life in the violent Florida State Prison; raped, beaten; punished for a crime he didn't commit.

The Florida Innocence Project helped exonerate Dillon with DNA evidence, which didn't exist then. It finally set him free in 2008, over half his lifetime later.

"It's more of a pain, and it's more pain to me that people don't recognize exactly what they did to me," Dillon says. "And I figured after all these years that more than anything that it would come right out and say it in the sense in that we wronged a kid and that's the way it was because that's what I was, a kid."

Now his life is redemption, moving forward; living his dream of singing.

"You can't keep living with all that hatred and all that bad feelings inside of you because it will eventually eat you up. When you can release that, you can release yourself and free yourself to move on and do other things."

His whole life ahead of him, with lessons to teach his audience.

"I want them to learn that they can change that everything doesn't have to be sorry," Dillon says. "A lot of things I notice about the world is everybody is so hung-up on their issues that they miss life, that they miss everything. And that's what issues are for, the issues are to stop you from having life, to stop you from seeing the good things."

With fire passion and song; a sign life can still be happy even after years of suffering.

Dillon released his CD "Black Robes and Lawyers" Wednesday night while performing at the Moon in Tallahassee. You can find his album on iTunes under "William Michael Dillon."