INNOCENCE: Criminal Convictions in Question after FBI Bullet Evidence Discredited

An investigation by The Washington Post and 60 Minutes has cast doubt on at least 250 criminal cases in which the defendant was convicted based on FBI bullet-lead test evidence. Since the early 1960s, the FBI has used a technique called comparative bullet-lead analysis on an estimated 2,500 cases, many of which were homicide cases prosecuted at state and local levels.

Comparative bullet-lead analysis, based on the assumption that all bullets in one batch will be chemically similar, examines the chemical compositions of bullets to determine if crime-scene bullets match bullets in a suspect’s possession. FBI labs have since concluded that all bullets in a single batch are not always chemically matched “because subtle chemical changes occurred throughout the manufacturing process.”FBI concerns over comparative bullet-lead analysis were first documented in 1991, and a study by two former FBI lab technicians challenging the technique was completed in 2001.

In 2004, the National Academy of Sciences also rejected comparative bullet-lead analysis, stating “that decades of FBI statements to jurors linking a particular bullet to those found in a suspect's gun or cartridge box were so overstated that such testimony should be considered ‘misleading under federal rules of evidence.’” A year later, FBI lab director Dwight Adams recommended to FBI Director Muehller that the Bureau abandon the comparative technique and discourage prosecutors from using it in future trials.

Adams believes that the government has an obligation to review cases in which the technique was used and to notify courts of any convictions that could have been erroneously based on the technique. "It troubles me that anyone would be in prison for any reason that wasn't justified. And that's why these reviews should be done in order to determine whether or not our testimony led to the conviction of a wrongly accused individual," Adams said to the Post. "I don't believe there's anything that we should be hiding."

The Post and 60 Minutes conducted a nationwide investigation, researching court files and holding interviews with dozens of lawyers and scientific experts. Their research yielded at least 250 cases in which evidence from comparative bullet-lead analysis was introduced. More than a dozen of these convictions have been reversed or are now being challenged as to whether innocent people were sent to prison. The FBI has said it would conduct a national review of these cases and create a system where future scientific testimony can be monitored.

(“FBI Forensic Test Full of Holes” by John Solomon, The Washington Post). Read the series here. See also Arbitrariness and Innocence.

Lessons from the Wrongfully Convicted

http://www.floridasupport.us/law/record.htm

http://www.floridasupport.us/law/SSRN-id1024307.pdf

CORNELL LAW SCHOOL

LEGAL STUDIES RESEARCH PAPER SERIES

The Dilemma of the Criminal Defendant with a

Prior Record – Lessons from the Wrongfully

Convicted

John H. Blume

Cornell Law School

Myron Taylor Hall

Ithaca, NY 14853-4901

Cornell Law School research paper No. 07-017

This paper can be downloaded without charge from:

The Social Science Research Network Electronic Paper Collection:

http://ssrn.com/abstract=1014181

*Professor of Law, Cornell Law School. I would like to thank Erin

Choi, Joanna Davella, Drucy Glass, Matthew Jury, Lei Young and Amber

Whitfield for their research and data gathering assistance. I would like to

thank Steve Clymer, Sherry Colb, George Fischer, Steve Garvey, Sam Gross,

Sheri Johnson and Faust Rossi for their helpful suggestions and comments.

-1-

The Dilemma of the Criminal

Defendant with a Prior

Record – Lessons from the

Wrongfully Convicted

John H. Blume*

Freed Death Row Inmates Call for Moratorium on Executions in North Carolina

Eighteen former death row inmates from around the country recently toured North Carolina and called for a moratorium on executions. The tour, one of the largest of its kind and organized by People of Faith Against the Death Penalty and Witness to Innocence, included speaking engagements in churches and public auditoriums, as well as a rally in front of North Carolina's Legislative Building. Two legislators, Rep. Pricey Harrison and Sen. Eleanor Kinnaird, joined the exonerees to lend their support to the group's call for a halt to executions and a study of North Carolina's capital punishment system.

Among the 18 exonerees who shared their stories of wrongful conviction during the tour was Shujaa Graham, who was released from California's death row in 1981. Graham said that those who have been wrongly convicted and sentenced to die must deal every day with the injustice they have endured, noting, "I've been out more than 20 years, and I still suffer today. I saw a lot of my friends executed. As I regained my humanity . . . I learned to start forgiving." Gary Drinkard (pictured), who was freed from Alabama's death row after he was acquitted in 2001, added, "I spent seven years, eight months and 21 days locked up. . . . A lot of ex-death row inmates say they don't have a lot of animosity. Well, I have a lot." Drinkard added that he is seeking a halt to executions because the justice system is inherently political. He said that prosecutors and district attorneys often feel pressured to get murder convictions in order to be promoted, and that this reality can lead to wrongful convictions.

Five wrongly convicted people have been freed from North Carolina's death row. Nationwide, there have been 124 death row exonerations.
(The News & Observer, November 3, 2007 & The Daily Tar Heel, November 5, 2007).

Please go to the web address below for more information on death row exonerees country wide.

Survivor of Death Row

By John Brummett

Juan Melendez, who grew up in Puerto Rico and had done itinerant fruit-picking in Florida, learned English during 18 years on Death Row. He says his teachers were other condemned men. He says they essentially commanded him to learn to communicate with them.

He speaks the language well enough now to be an accomplished public speaker. He travels the country telling audiences why he shouldn't have received the death penalty, how he finally got freed and that the death penalty is beyond fixing.

Last week he spoke to about 125 people at the annual dinner of the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. The group soon will ask Gov. Mike Beebe - in futility, I suspect - to impose a moratorium on executions.

When Melendez was convicted in 1984 of killing a cosmetology school owner, he knew maybe four English words, and three of them, he says, were curse words. So he sat in a courtroom lacking much understanding of what all those well-attired people and important-looking people were talking about.

The jury was being kept a bit in the dark, too, such as to the fact that another man had confessed to the murder. A man seen fleeing the cosmetology school was not pursued, and police admitted they botched the crime scene.

Authorities preferred to go after the riper target of this Juan Melendez, in spite of the absence of a single shred of physical evidence. It had two witnesses, both dubious. Melendez will admit to hanging with a bad crowd and doing petty crimes.

That one of the two witnesses aspired to be a police informant and was getting spared jail time in exchange for his testimony - well, juries don't get advised of that kind of thing. That would be prejudicial to the prosecution, you see. Never mind that it might be helpful to the man whose day in court it supposedly actually is.

"I thought it was just a procedure," Melendez, 32 at the time of that trial, said in an interview before his speech last week. He recalls sitting there at the defense table assuming he couldn't be in any real trouble, since he didn't kill anybody and the elaborate exercise unfolding before him surely would come to that conclusion.

But then he could understand one thing - the photographs of the victims that were shown the jurors. This was a brutal crime, with a slit throat, three bullet wounds and a pool of blood.

Powerful emotion is one of the fatal flaws in the death penalty. A reasonable doubt that might be applied to a lesser crime becomes less a viable option to a juror determined to try to fashion some form of justice out of such horror.

Then you have the problems with witnesses, since they are human beings possessed of the usual and varying frailties. Some are simply mistaken. Some are simply liars. Some are simply looking for a deal.

Next comes the politically elected prosecutor, whose career perhaps rests on his landing a conviction, since the case is likely his most high-profile, and who is inclined to make his bed with whatever excuses for witnesses he can find.

Throw in the uneven pattern of prosecution - from one jurisdiction to the next, from one race to the other and from one economic class to the other.

When, at 50, Melendez got freed, it was because anti-death penalty legal groups had gained him a new trial. When required to try Melendez anew, the prosecution had no case at all. The confessor had long since died. The old witnesses' stories weren't the same as before. There remained no physical evidence.

This is Melendez' most thoughtful point: Even if a man did the crime, the man we kill is never the man we convicted. Years on Death Row, with only four hours a week spent out in the yard, will change you.

The underlying question - beyond the haunting one of whether we might be putting in the grave an innocent man - is what we're really accomplishing by killing him even if he did it.



-------

John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.

Speaker returns to discuss death row

By: Alice Miller, Staff Writer
Issue date: 10/31/07

Almost exactly one year after his last appearance on campus, Juan Melendez returned to UNC to speak to about 25 students about his experiences on death row.

Melendez, who served almost 18 years on death row before he was found innocent and freed from a Florida prison, stressed in Tuesday's "Wrongfully Convicted" program that innocent people often receive the death sentence.

"My story is not unique," he said. "It happens all the time."

He enthusiastically described the positive effects of his imprisonment, such as learning to read, write and speak English better from friends who became closer to him than family.

He explained how those people, unlike the guards who watched him, made him feel like a human being.

But he compared these ups to the downs of witnessing unfair racial treatment among the prisoners, of the suicides of death row inmates and of never knowing how much time he had left to live.

Melendez was the 99th death row inmate to be freed in the U.S. To date, more than 120 innocent people have escaped death row before their executions.

The UNC Law Death Penalty Project sponsored the event both last year and Tuesday night.

Jennifer Karpowicz, president of the club and a third-year law student, said she was happy to have Melendez return.

"(It's) important for people to hear that our system is imperfect," she said.

While in prison, Melendez went through stages of feeling enraged, betrayed and afraid. But he kept a positive attitude, which he said was a key factor in maintaining his sanity and his will to live.

He said he attributes his positive spirit to "lots and lots of beautiful dreams," as well as the continued support of his mother and aunts from Puerto Rico and letters from his pen pal supporters located around the United States.

Some of the audience members Tuesday night were undergraduate students from professor Donna LeFebvre's criminal law class.

Mona Mohajerani, a senior political science major, said Melendez's speech brought a personal angle to the death penalty, which is often discussed as a political issue.

"You hear a lot about it, but I have never put a face to it," she said.

Elie Hessel, a junior psychology and political science double major, also said Melendez's experiences hit home to her when she realized people on death row are "real people with personalities and families."

The Death Penalty Project has many events throughout the year to increase awareness about death penalty issues. Events vary from visiting speakers, such as Melendez, to fundraisers to volunteering.

To end the evening, Melendez called for the audience to get involved to end the cycle of injustice in the political system. He said he wants to help others who find themselves in the same situation he was.

"Law is made by human beings, carried out by human beings," he said. "We are human beings, and we make mistakes."



Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu

Death Row Survivor

Speaker Decries Death Penalty

This article was published on Monday, November 19, 2007 5:25 PM CST in Columns
By John Brummett THE MORNING NEWS

Juan Melendez, a Puerto Rican who had done itinerant fruit-picking in Florida, learned English during 18 years on death row. He says his teachers were other condemned men. He says they essentially commanded him to learn to communicate with them. He speaks the language well enough now to be an accomplished public speaker. He travels the country telling audiences why he shouldn't have received the death penalty, how he finally got freed and that the death penalty is beyond fixing.

Last week he spoke to about 125 people at the annual dinner of the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. The group soon will ask Gov. Mike Beebe -- in futility, I suspect -- to impose a moratorium on executions. When Melendez was convicted in 1984 of killing a cosmetology school owner, he knew maybe four English words, and three of them, he says, were curse words.

So he sat in a courtroom lacking much understanding of what all those well-attired people and important-looking people were talking about. The jury was being kept a bit in the dark, too, such as to the fact that another man, a police informant, had confessed to the murder. But the authorities preferred to go after the riper target of this Juan Melendez, in spite of the absence of a single shred of physical evidence. It had two witnesses, both dubious. Melendez will admit to hanging with a bad crowd and doing some petty crimes. That one of the two witnesses was getting spared jail time in exchange for his testimony -- well, juries don't get advised of that kind of thing. That would be prejudicial to the prosecution. Never mind that it might be helpful to the man whose day in court it supposedly actually is, and who is about to get two prime decades of his life taken from him.

"I thought it was just a procedure," Melendez, 32 at the time of that trial, said in an interview before his speech last week. He recalls sitting there at the defense table assuming he couldn't be in any real trouble, since he didn't kill anybody and the elaborate exercise unfolding before him surely would come to that conclusion.But then he could understand one thing -- the photographs of the victims that were shown the jurors. This was a brutal crime, with a slit throat, three bullet wounds and a pool of blood.Powerful emotion is one of the fatal flaws in the death penalty. A reasonable doubt that might be applied to a lesser crime becomes less a viable option to a juror determined to try to fashion some form of justice out of such horror.

Then you have the problems with witnesses, since they are human beings possessed of the usual and varying frailties. Some are simply mistaken. Some are simply liars. Some are simply looking for a deal.Next comes the politically elected prosecutor, whose career perhaps rests on his landing a conviction, since the case is likely his most high-profile, and who is inclined to make his bed with whatever excuses for witnesses he can find. Throw in the uneven pattern of prosecution -- from one jurisdiction to the next, from one race to the other and from one economic class to the other.

When, at 50, Melendez got freed, it was because anti-death penalty legal groups had gained him a new trial. When required to try Melendez anew, the prosecution had no case at all. The confessor had long since died. The old witnesses' stories weren't the same as before. There remained no physical evidence.

This is Melendez' most thoughtful point: Even if a man did the crime, the man we kill is never the man we convicted. Years on death row, with only four hours a week spent out in the yard, will change you.

The underlying question -- beyond the haunting one of whether we might be putting in the grave an innocent man -- is what we're really accomplishing by killing him even if he did it.

John Brummett is a columnist and reporter for Stephens Media group in Little Rock. jbrummett@arkansasnews.com

He's got a right to say the death penalty is wrong

Monday, November 19, 2007

He walks alone a lot. Loses himself in work. Spends time in church. Lately, he's ventured out to talk to high school students and, if he's asked, he will testify before legislators about ending the death penalty.

"If I can help someone else, that helps the pain," says Byron Halsey, 46. "No one should have to go through what I did."

His pain?

The brutal rape and murder in 1985 of two children he considered his own, the children of his girlfriend. Then his arrest for the crimes, his conviction and imprisonment for 20 years, barely missing the death penalty, but facing the rest of his life in prison -- a convicted child-killer, a detested member of an unforgiving population.

"I was on top of everybody's list," says Halsey. "Just took a few days before someone jumped me."

And he didn't do it, just as he had said all along.

Couldn't have done it, according to DNA evidence that not only excluded him as the killer but pointed directly to another man -- a neighbor who testified against Halsey and then was free to commit at least two more brutal rapes before he was finally jailed.

Halsey has been reluctant to tell his story since his release in May, to allow himself again to be the target of attention, the way he was during his trial in Elizabeth.

"They said I was a monster, everybody wanted to stone me," he says. And when, in an obvious jury compromise, he was spared death, people in the courtroom booed.

"They wanted me dead."

One newspaper -- not this one -- ran the picture of the post-mortem X-ray taken of one of the murdered children. Tyrone Urquhart, 7, had been killed by someone hammering nails into his head. His sister, Tina, 8, had been strangled and raped.

"I loved those kids and they said I killed them and I know I didn't."

His lawyer, Vanessa Potkin of the Innocence Project in New York, says Halsey, now 47, was "victimized twice -- once by losing his children, and again by being falsely convicted of their murders."

Halsey was an easy man to blame for murder. He is literally a born loser -- brought into the world in a prison for women where his mother was sent for the crime of fornication.

He spent his childhood in foster care -- and, often, in trouble. Halsey never got beyond the sixth grade and was considered learning disabled. He had a record -- "crazy, stupid stuff," he says -- and served eight months in a county jail for burglary.

Still, there was nothing in his record to suggest he was a sexual predator -- although there was plenty in the record of the man eventually identified as matching the DNA of the children's killers. Halsey was just an easier target.

Also, he confessed after 30 hours of questioning in a 40-hour period.

"I just wanted the cops to leave me alone," says Halsey, who was interrogated after spending the night searching for the children he was later convicted of murdering -- children, who, prosecutors say now, were murdered by a neighbor.

Potkin says Halsey believed that, once the police found more evidence, he would be freed and the confession wouldn't mean anything. The transcript of the interrogation shows Halsey talking what a police officer would later term "gibberish."

"I didn't write that," he says. "I signed what the cops wrote."

Potkin says about a quarter of all innocent but convicted murderers confess. Halsey repudiated the confession at his 1987 trial but it was admitted into evidence.

Prosecutors sought the death penalty but, after five days of deliberation, the jury returned with verdicts convicting him of non-capital homicide -- an unintentional killing.

"The verdict made no sense," says Potkin. "How do you not intend to kill someone by driving nails into his head? It was clearly a compromise to the holdouts to vote for a conviction."

The Legislature, during its lame-duck session, is expected to vote on a measure repealing the death penalty in New Jersey. A coalition of organizations -- including the Innocence Project -- is pressing for passage of the bill.

"I think they should. I could have been killed, and I was innocent."

But what of the man who killed the children he considered his own? What if that person turns out -- as suspected -- to be the man who testified against him, sending him to jail for murders he didn't commit?

Wouldn't Byron Halsey want him to die?

"As long as he's in prison, what good would it do?"

Bob Braun's columns appear Monday and Thursday. He may be reached at rbraun@starledger.com or (973) 392-4281.

Exonerated death-row inmate to speak

Published: Tuesday, November 13, 2007
By Adam Silverman
Free Press Staff Writer

Shabaka Sundiata WaQlimi's name in Swahili means "uncompromising teacher," and that's the approach this exonerated death-row inmate carries with him as he travels the country and speaks against capital punishment.

A dedicated abolitionist, WaQlimi wields a ready explanation for why he opposes the death penalty.

"I am that central point," he said. "Society tried, convicted and came within 15 hours of killing me for a crime I did not commit. I came within 15 hours of being murdered. I don't use the term 'executed' because it would have been a murder, because I committed no crime."

WaQlimi is scheduled to give a public talk tonight at Vermont Law School in South Royalton. Through his personal example of life, near-death and ultimate survival on prison's bleakest ward, he plans to make a case for ending what he considers state-sanctioned killing.

Born 57 years ago in Charleston, S.C., as Joseph Green Brown -- which remains his legal name in honor of his mother, who died recently just shy of her 110th birthday, he said -- WaQlimi is speaking on behalf of Witness to Innocence, an anti-death-penalty organization.

""What happened in my case is not unique. What happened to me is still being done today," WaQlimi said. "Why are we killing people? What is the need?"

His case began in 1974 in Tampa, Fla., when he was convicted of robbing a clothing store and raping and killing co-owner Earlene Barksdale, according to court papers summarizing the allegations. Authorities shipped him to a tiny cell on Florida's death row.

WaQlimi knew state prosecutors had elicited false testimony, misled the jury and hid exculpatory facts. Among the details: evidence casting doubt on the honesty of the state's key witness and the impossibility that WaQlimi's gun was the murder weapon, a panel of federal judges said years later.

Appeals through state courts provided no relief, and WaQlimi's execution date inched closer. While he waited, the state strapped 16 others to its electric chair.

"Every day is a psychological, emotional and sometimes physical challenge. Your spirituality is questioned. Your mind is questioned. Your emotions are questioned. And that carries over to your body," WaQlimi said. "Everyone on death row, we all have one commonality. We all live less than 100 yards from instant death. You try not to develop any type of friendship, because you know sooner or later one of you is going to take a walk."

Three weeks before his Sept. 18, 1983, execution, prison staff moved WaQlimi to the "death watch cell" just 30 feet from the chair. A tailor measured him for his burial suit. He refused a last meal, telling guards he was sure he wouldn't die in prison, and he wasn't through eating yet.

He heard electricity coursing through the chair twice a day as executioners rehearsed.

"It's maddening, man," he said. "How I retained my sanity, only the Heavenly Father can answer that. He probably saw some good in me."

Finally, half a day before the early morning execution, a federal judge issued a stay. WaQlimi left death watch and returned to the row. The case progressed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Judges there reversed WaQlimi's conviction in 1986.

The state decided against a retrial, and in March 1987, WaQlimi was released. He visited his mother a week later, an emotional encounter he still can't describe. "It was beautiful," he managed to say. He moved to Washington, D.C., bounced through a number of odd jobs and finally found work in a homeless shelter. Now he's employed as facilities coordinator for Covenant House, a citywide program for at-risk kids.

The prosecutor, now a Florida judge, has maintained in media interviews that WaQlimi is guilty, but the former inmate and Michael Mello, a Vermont Law School professor and one-time defense lawyer on capital cases, said the reversal amounted to total vindication.

Mello, with whom WaQlimi lived for his first few weeks in Washington, said he hopes people will learn the debate about the death penalty goes beyond dry facts and figures.

"Capital punishment isn't a collection of arguments," Mello said. "It's a collection of stories and fully dimensional human beings."

Public speaking is cathartic, too, WaQlimi said.

"It's almost like therapy," he said. "When I got out and even still today, there's no books or no school of thought on how to deal with people like me, because we should either be dead or spending the rest of our lives incarcerated."

If you go

WHAT: Speech by Shabaka WaQlimi, an exonerated former inmate on Florida's death row, and Michael Mello, a law professor and one-time defense lawyer on capital cases.

WHEN: 7-9 p.m. today.

WHERE: Chase Community Center, Vermont Law School, South Royalton.

COST: Free. Source: Vermont Law School

Contact Adam Silverman at 660-1854 or asilverm@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com

Bill Moyers talks with Jerry Miller

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05042007/transcript2.html

May 4, 2007

Bill Moyers talks with Jerry Miller, the 200th person exonerated by post conviction DNA testing about clearing his name.

BILL MOYERS: You probably know America's the World leader in putting people behind bars. We send them up the river at least five times the rate of other industrialized nations. At the end of 2005, there was a record 2.2 million people in our prisons and jails. Now, there is one less. And that's especially good news because Jerry Miller shouldn't have been in prison in the first place. He was 22 when police arrested him. It was a case of mistaken identity. But Jerry Miller spent 25 years locked up before DNA proved his innocence. He became the 200th person exonerated through DNA evidence thanks to the organization known as Innocence Project. Some of those narrowly escaped the death penalty, but that's another story. Right now, it's time to celebrate one man's liberation.

Local news teams in Chicago were there to witness a quarter-century of travesty come to a jubilant end. It was cheers of joy for Jerry Miller's family.

After 25 years in prison for a horrible crime he did not commit, Jerry Miller was now a free man. A recent DNA test proved he had nothing to do with the brutal rape and kidnapping he'd been convicted of back in 1982. Two eyewitnesses had been wrong - the DNA test pointed to a different man - one who's currently in prison for another crime.

Confronted with Miller's innocence, local officials apologized for a life stolen.

BOB MILAN: (1st Assistant Cook County Attorney) On behalf of Dick Devine, and the men and women of the Cook County States Attorney's Office, I would like to express my deepest regrets to Mr. Miller, and wish him nothing but the best in his future life.

JERRY MILLER: When I left...

BILL MOYERS: Jerry Miller is walking free today thanks in part to his own tenacity. While behind bars, he wrote scores of letter to the Innocence Project - an advocacy group in New York that uses DNA evidence to help exonerate innocent prisoners. Miller's letters got their attention, and they got the DNA test that changed his life.

BILL MOYERS: When you were arrested in 1981, you clearly established with your father that you had been watching television with him that night, when the crime was actually perpetrated?

JERRY MILLER: Basically, my family, my mother was present. Two brothers and an uncle. We was all in the house.

BILL MOYERS: What did your father and mother think and do when you were arrested? They knew you'd been home with them.

JERRY MILLER: Well, they, you know, like anyone else, they was totally shocked. I was shocked. But what ended up happening was I was basically just taken from my home to almost seventeen miles away.

BILL MOYERS: The police came to your house.

JERRY MILLER: Yeah. They came from out of their district to my home and took me about seventeen miles away. So when they saw me leaving in the police car, they was assuming that it was in, you know, in this area. So, they were calling police stations in this area. I was around the area, but they couldn't find me. It took about two days before they found me.

BILL MOYERS: What was going through your head?

JERRY MILLER: Man, I knew something was happening. I didn't really understand what it was and they never told me.

BILL MOYERS: The police didn't and they were aware of that?

JERRY MILLER: They never told me. It was almost a secret. As soon as I was taken to the police station, I was photographed. And asked, you know, to get in the line up. And I had refused you know, from the first, from the start. But eventually, I said, "Well what do I have to fear?" you know. And I was worn down. And I got in a line up and it cost me.

BILL MOYERS: Did you have a lawyer?

JERRY MILLER: No.

BILL MOYERS: You were how old?

JERRY MILLER: I was 22.

BILL MOYERS: And you'd been in the military.

JERRY MILLER: Right.

BILL MOYERS: No criminal record.

JERRY MILLER: No.

BILL MOYERS: And you were in a line up. And you were innocent. And you knew you were innocent.

JERRY MILLER: Right. So therefore, I had no fear. And like I said, I was worn down. I was ready to go. You know, I was ready to go home. And you see what happened.

BILL MOYERS: Can you recall what was in your head in court when they said 'guilty'?

JERRY MILLER: Man, I was defeated. I was literally defeated. You know, every turn, you know, was against me. Every move we made went against me. Every move my lawyer made they went against me. I remember the judge. I still see him. I can see his face. His name was Thomas Maloney. And you know, he's - matter of fact, I beat him out of the penitentiary.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?

JERRY MILLER: He's in the penitentiary.

BILL MOYERS: For what?

JERRY MILLER: Taking bribes.

BILL MOYERS: The judge who presided for your case?

JERRY MILLER: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: And he's still there?

JERRY MILLER: My understanding is he's there. I know he's been there, you know.

BILL MOYERS: It's like a bad movie

JERRY MILLER: It's a bad movie.

BILL MOYERS: When did it settle in on you, I've lost my freedom? I'm innocent but I'm going up for 45 years. When did that happen?

JERRY MILLER: Well, when I went before him, he said that I was convicted overwhelmingly. The evidence was overwhelming. And I knew that was a lie, you know, because I was innocent. So, how could everything be overwhelming, you know, to convict me? So that was his statement.

BILL MOYERS: And there wasn't anything you could do.

JERRY MILLER: No, nothing I could do except accept the time that they gave me. You know, I mean, it was - it was a defeat. You know, I had lost.

BILL MOYERS: It was a long time ago, but let's go back to the first week, the first day, the first hour you arrive in prison.

JERRY MILLER: I knew I was going to a place I had never been before. You know, so I had to, you know, deal with it, you know. I was going into the unknown, you know.

BILL MOYERS: Tell me about the system. You were innocent and it just - the wheels just kept rolling on and on.

JERRY MILLER: Well, the system - if you just start with my case from day one from me being taken from my home that night, and just trace it all the way to the conviction, you would be - you would be upset. Very upset with the system. You know, I was angry, you know. Depressed. You know, I felt like giving up in the beginning. But as time went on, I realized that that was a waste of time. You know, you can - who am I gonna be angry with? A system that is really abstract. You know, I'm living in it, but you know, it has no faces. And then, you have the victim and the witnesses. If they walked in here right now, I wouldn't even - I wouldn't even know it's them.

BILL MOYERS: Were you saying to people, "I'm innocent. I didn't do it."

JERRY MILLER: For a whole year i n the country jail, that's all I did. I'd be like - everyone I saw, I was ready to tell, tell them my story. "Man, look, this is what happened. It wasn't me. I didn't do it." And it was just a constant conversation that I had. But you know, it really doesn't matter, you know, whether you say you're innocent or not, you know. If they get you, they got you.

BILL MOYERS: You must look back and think the moment I was picked up -

JERRY MILLER: It was over. Yeah. And that's what people tell me. When I tell them the story I'm telling you, they say, the moment you was put in that police car, it was - the dye was set.

BILL MOYERS: What was your thought as to why your luck was so bad? Why, despite the fact that you had a clean record, you were home with your parents, that at every turn, the trap kept closing. Why was that happening?

JERRY MILLER: Man, look, let me tell you something. I sat in my room. And I'd just try to just look at my life in retrospect. What did I do to deserve this? But I couldn't come up with anything, you know. There was nothing in life that I had done to deserve what had happened.

BILL MOYERS: There must have been a moment early on where you thought, this can't go on forever. Someone somewhere has got to hear me.

JERRY MILLER: Right. Right. But when I realized that, you know, it was gonna be a tough time, I just, you know, got myself together and tried to figure out what I had to do. I had to maintain myself. I had to grow. I had to mature, you know, so I read.

BILL MOYERS: You read?

JERRY MILLER: And I kept reading. Well, I talked to my mother. And she had told me that I sounded depressed on the phone. This was early when I had been arrested. And she said, look, read. You know, read. Anything you can hands on, just read. A newspaper, whatever. Just read. And when I got off the phone, that's what I did. I went and got a newspaper and I started reading. Cause she had told me and kept telling me, and everything she said was true. Everything she had told me in life and how it was gonna happen was true. And so I decided I better just listen.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean, everything she told you -

JERRY MILLER: Well, you know how mothers are.

BILL MOYERS: Yeah I do -

JERRY MILLER: If she says don't do that and you do it anyway, and then you suffer the consequences, and she says to you what did I tell you? Didn't I tell you to listen to me? And then after a while, I realized that I better listen to her this time.And that's what I did. And I read.I read things that I liked.

BILL MOYERS: What-- what did you like?

JERRY MILLER: I liked to read about sports in the newspapers it started like that. Then, you know, just novels. You know, action. But after a while, I started reading books that mattered, you know.

BILL MOYERS: Such as?

JERRY MILLER: Such as spiritual books. You know, I never could really understand the Bible. I had to grow as a person really to understand the Bible. You know, because when you're in a cell and you're reading it, you know, you have to be - if you have a Bible in your hand, you have to know what you're doing.

BILL MOYERS: I think I would have been insane with anger.

JERRY MILLER: Well, I wasn't insane with anger, but I was angry. You know, I'm human. I went through the same emotions you would have went through or anybody else in this situation. But after a while, you have to realize, you know, this is a tough situation. You don't have time to waste time. You have to prepare yourself for, you know, you have to do the right things at the right time.

BILL MOYERS: But you were living in a nightmare.

JERRY MILLER: Yeah. But you know, a lot of people is living in nightmares. I'm not the only one that made it or that will make it, you know. I'm fortunate because I made it intact, mind, body and soul. You know, you can't even tell I been locked up. Not for 25 years.

BILL MOYERS: Did some of the people you were with not make it?

JERRY MILLER: Of course.

BILL MOYERS: What happened to them?

JERRY MILLER: You know, the penitentiary was a violent place. You know, you have to be blessed. You have to be lucky. There's a lot of things you have to be to make it out of the penitentiary.

BILL MOYERS: How did you protect yourself from that undirected violence?

JERRY MILLER: Just being myself. You know, you just - you have to live. You're put in that situation, you have to - you have to adjust, you know. It's like anyone else. It's like animals in nature. You know, when society encroaches in their area, they adjust or they perish. You know, you put a man in a situation like this, you are either gonna sink or swim, you know.

BILL MOYERS: And what was your strategy every day?

JERRY MILLER: Well, you have to learn the rules. You know, the rules are the first thing. And just learn how to, you know, stay positive. That's the most important thing because if you - give up, started giving up is depressing, you know, negativity.

BILL MOYERS: Was there a time when you -

JERRY MILLER: Oh, yes. You know, one thing I say about hope, you know, you lose it. You lose it every day. At least I did. But I'd get it back. I gained it back every day. That's the blessing.

BILL MOYERS: That's a problem, isn't it, to regain hope after you have lost it. Particularly when you're still in the same situation you were yesterday and the day before and the day before. And you're likely to be there for the days to come. I mean, how do you regain hope?

JERRY MILLER: You find things that - like a sense of accomplishment. You know if you, let's say I pick up a book and I don't really understand, you know, what its saying. So I'd pick it up again the next day and the next day. I had to read a book, well, a chapter in a book, I think it was eleven times just before I understood what he really was saying. So that's just gives you a sense of accomplishment. The littlest things you can do and have a sense of accomplishment helped me.

BILL MOYERS: Did you have any outside contacts?

JERRY MILLER: Yeah. I had people that would write. Talk to on the phone - my family stayed in contact.

BILL MOYERS: Your father? Mother?

JERRY MILLER: Yeah. My father died. And he was the main one, you know. He was my - he was the one that pushed it. He kept, you know, trying to free me himself. But he couldn't do it, because he died.

BILL MOYERS: He died in what year?

JERRY MILLER: '93.

BILL MOYERS: That must have been a crushing moment when you heard. Had he been to see you, visit you?

JERRY MILLER: Yeah. He would always come. Bring my sisters and brothers. You know, nieces, nephews.

BILL MOYERS: Did you give up hope when he died?

JERRY MILLER: For a little while, I lost hope, you know. But like I say, I'd get it back. You know, it took a little while to get it back, but I got it back.

BILL MOYERS: You said in that first letter you wrote to the Innocence Project that your dad had been your chief activist. What did he do?

JERRY MILLER: Well, you know, he's my father. I'm his son. You know, you know, a father longs to have a son. And I was his first son. So, he tried to do everything possible. Like the lawyer. You know, like you asked me did I have a public defender. Well, no. He made sure I had a paid lawyer. You know, but I didn't want them to put up the house and spend all their savings, you know, on a lawyer.

BILL MOYERS: Was he prepared to do that?

JERRY MILLER: He was prepared to do that. But it would have hurt my whole entire family.

BILL MOYERS: When you got out on parole last year, what were the conditions of parole because you had not been exonerated.

JERRY MILLER: I was, you know, I had done all the time and was let out and was classified as a sex offender. I had to go to police station. Identify myself and be put on the Internet. Man, do you know how much - my pride took a big blow. It took a very big blow. I don't care how strong you are. That is a hell of a situation. And I was able to like one day, kind of down, the next day I'd be up. Just dealing with that really tested me.

BILL MOYERS What about you was most tested?

JERRY MILLER: Well, the most battles in a situation like that takes place right here. Right there. The majority of the battles take place in your mind. You just have to, you know, be strong and be disciplined.

BILL MOYERS: What was the greatest assault on your mind?

JERRY MILLER: Well, to be told - to be lied on is a tough thing. To be lied on like I was lied on. To be basically put before the world as someone who I wasn't. And carrying that weight for 25, 26 years. You know, it was hard. It was real hard. But you know, I made it. You know, I'm intact, you know. So, that's why I thank God for the day of my exoneration. I thank God for the results of the test. Because I feared that somehow, that would be tampered with. You know, because I had lost trust in the system. So, you know, I was like, man, if they are able to, you know, tamper with this or if they - if it don't go my way, how do I tell my family when I been telling them I was innocent all these years?

BILL MOYERS: So you've spent virtually your entire adult life in prison. For a crime you did not commit. And yet, I don't sense any vengefulness. I don't sense any bitterness. I don't sense any anger.

JERRY MILLER: But that doesn't mean it didn't happen. I didn't have that. I had that in the beginning. Because I didn't know better, you know. To hold those kind of feelings, you know, it can tear you apart. You know, to be angry for 26 years, can you imagine that? To be bitter for 26 years. What can you accomplish bitter and angry for 26 years? Nothing. You know, and being a negative individual draws no one to them, you know. You have to be who you are. And I'm not a negative individual. If I had been, then I probably would, you know, would have not had the blessings that I received.

BILL MOYERS: The blessings?

JERRY MILLER:I was not meant to be - I was not meant to be in this situation.

BILL MOYERS: I know. But you talk about blessings, but you look back and you spent 25 years.

JERRY MILLER: Yeah. But a blessing to deal with it. I can't help that it happened. You know things happen in life that's uncontrollable. But to make it out of it, that's the blessing, you know. To survive it.

BILL MOYERS: Did you take faith into prison with you? Faith in God?

JERRY MILLER: Look, I - yes, faith in God. In this situation, you've got to know there's a God. How can you deny? Because when it happened, you know, like I told you in the beginning how everything was against me. Well when that DNA test came back proving my innocence, from that point, everything went for me. Everything. And that's why I'm sitting here with you right now.

BILL MOYERS: You knew all these years in your head that you were innocent.

JERRY MILLER: Of course.

BILL MOYERS: So what's the difference it makes to be officially exonerated?

JERRY MILLER: It makes a lot of difference because you know, that means that I'm no different than you. I'm an American. I deserve all the rights of being an American, you know. And I deserve the chances that everyone else has. You know, I have a lot of time to make up for. So I have to get it done real quick.

BILL MOYERS: All these years later when you look back, was there one image that kept coming to mind?

JERRY MILLER: You know what? The day I received the news about the DNA test proving that it wasn't me - it was March 28th. And I was - I called my brother and told him, "Man, I just got the news. I won." And he said, "Man, do you know what today is?" He said "This is the day Daddy died." We called him 'My daddy.' He said "This is the day my daddy died." So on that day my father died, I received the news. So I guess he received the news, too.

BILL MOYERS: Jerry Miller, thank you very much. And good luck to you.

JERRY MILLER: All right. Thanks.

Ex-inmates: End death penalty

11/02/2007 05:58 PM
By: Cassie Safrit

Eighteen former death row inmates from across the nation who have now been freed came to North Carolina on Friday hoping to end the state's death penalty once and for all.

RALEIGH -- National and state controversy has the death penalty on hold, but some want more than a temporary fix. That’s why former death row inmates who have now been freed came to North Carolina hoping to prompt a change.

"I spent six and a half years on death row for a crime I did not commit,” said Jay Smith. One by one, people like Jay Smith came forward with their own stories:

“My name is Ron Keine. I spent two years on death row in New Mexico for a crime I did not commit.”

In all, 18 former death row inmates from across the country who have now been exonerated gathered in front of the General Assembly on Friday to ask for a moratorium on the death penalty.

"If we are about fairness, if we are about justice, we can't afford to have a system run by human beings that makes mistakes, that has a punishment that can't be undone,” explained Ray Krone.
Former death row inmates who have now been freed came to North Carolina hoping to prompt a change. North Carolina has not executed an inmate since August of last year because of a dispute over what role a doctor should play in executions. Several lawsuits remain unresolved and there's no end in sight for the de facto moratorium.

“We've got to bring this death penalty to an end,” said Darby Tillis. “It serves no purpose at all. It’s racist, biased and prejudiced.”

Some North Carolina lawmakers agree.

"We want the innocent out of jail and the criminals in jail and we have a mixture right now,” said state Rep. Pricey Harrison.

But so far, those attempts have been futile. A bill that called for a moratorium stalled last session, and many legislators think that will be the case again.

"I see the trend going our way,” Harrison said. “We're a few votes short and I don't see us passing it.”

But the 18 free men who were once death row inmates say they'll keep fighting.

"What happened to me 27 years ago is still happening to young men today,” Darby said.

The Witness to Innocence Group sponsored Friday's rally. According to the group, North Carolina has had five death row inmates exonerated.

Ex-death row inmates seek pause in executions

Pauline Matthews, left, and Darby Tillis were among those who called for a moratorium on executions in North Carolina. Matthews' son Ryan Matthews spent more than six years on Louisiana's death row. Tillis was on death row in Illinois after a wrongful conviction in a double slaying.
Staff Photo by Chuck Liddy

Published: Nov 03, 2007 12:30 AM
Modified: Nov 03, 2007 05:49 AM

Wrongly convicted men tell their stories, urge state legislators to take action
Titan Barksdale, Staff Writer

RALEIGH - Former death row inmates who were wrongly convicted and imprisoned called on state legislators Friday to pass a moratorium on executions in North Carolina.
One by one, 18 exonerated men walked up to a microphone in front of the Legislative Building and shared their stories. They told a group of onlookers how they were almost executed for crimes the didn't commit.

Though the details of their stories vary, they share the same belief that the death penalty should be halted and studied by legislators.

Two North Carolina legislators, Rep. Pricey Harrison, a Guilford County Democrat, and Sen. Eleanor Kinnaird, an Orange County Democrat, were in attendance and spoke in favor of a moratorium. Harrison said after her remarks that she doubts legislators will pass one in the coming session.

Former inmates such as Shujaa Graham, who spent years on California's death row, emphatically declared a moratorium is needed.

Graham and the other former death row inmates are part of a Philadelphia-based group called Witness to Innocence. It supports an end to the death penalty across the country.

The group was invited to Raleigh by People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, a nonprofit group in Carrboro that seeks to abolish the death penalty.

Graham is no stranger to advocacy or North Carolina.

In December 2005, Graham was arrested in Raleigh at a protest of the execution of Kenneth Boyd. Boyd was the 1,000th person executed in the U.S. since 1977, the end of a 10-year unofficial moratorium on executions that coincided with challenges to the constitutionality of the death penalty.

Graham, who recalled the protest in detail, said the experience was "beautiful." He said he was outside Central Prison with Alan Gell, a former death row inmate exonerated in North Carolina, and the families of victims who opposed the death penalty.

"We told the police, 'We heard it's going to be a murder here tonight,' " Graham said. "They told us to get back, but we kept moving forward, hand in hand. And then they arrested us."

He said he was released the next day and went to South Carolina to protest another execution.

It was in a California state prison where Graham said his fiery spirit was cultivated, and his life could have ended.

While in prison for robbery, Graham was accused of killing a correction officer in 1973. His first trial on the murder charge ended in a mistrial. He was sentenced to death in his second trial three years later.

Graham, who is black, won a new trial because the California Supreme Court ruled that potential jurors who were black were improperly excluded from the jury. In 1981, a new jury found him innocent.

Graham said he was framed.

After his release from prison, Graham said, he devoted his life to activism.

When he talks, he often quotes civil rights leaders and labels himself a "revolutionary survivor" instead of a victim of an imperfect justice system.

Despite Graham's defiant tone, tears welled in his eyes when he recalled the years he spent on death row as an innocent man.

It's a painful memory that all of the former death row inmates can't escape and are trying to cope with each day, he said.

"I've been out more than 20 years, and I still suffer today," Graham said. "I saw a lot of my friends executed. As I regained my humanity ... I learned to start forgiving."

Graham and the former death row inmates will speak at 6 p.m. today at St. Raphael the Archangel Catholic Church in Raleigh.


titan.barksdale@newsobserver.com or (919) 829-4802

Death Row Innocent Vouch For NC Moratorium

Friday, Nov 02, 2007 - 06:15 PM Updated: 07:16 PM

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Gary Drinkard spent five years on Alabama’s death row for a robbery and murder he did not commit.

“You’re sacred to death every day,” Drinkard said. "If it had been up to the state of Alabama I'd be dead today." Discuss This Story

Drinkard and 17 others exonerated from death row say there should be a moratorium on the death penalty in North Carolina. They visited Raleigh with the group “Witness to Innocence” to voice their opinion.

Freddie Lee Pitts was 19 years old when he was sentenced. He spent nine and a half years on Florida’s death row for the murder of two service station attendants, a crime he did not commit.

"Wrong color, wrong place, wrong time,” Pitts said. "The irony of this is that I was in court being sentenced to death on Aug. 28, 1963, which was the day of the big march in Washington when Martin Luther King gave his ‘I have a dream’ speech, while I was having a nightmare."

Drinkard and Pitts both are supporting moratoriums on the death penalty across the country that says false confessions and false witness identifications are sending innocent people to death. State senators and representatives joined the rally to support a moratorium so the issue can be studied.

But in the fight for justice there are voices for victims. Wake County District Attorney C. Colon Willoughby believes in some cases, the death penalty is justified.

"There are certain crimes that are so horrendous that the community ought to make the decision what the appropriate punishment is," Willoughby said.

The exonerated men say it’s the system the community needs to look at.

“I actually believed in the death penalty until I saw how the justice system really worked,” Drinkard said.

The group “Witness to Innocence” said since 1973, 124 innocent people have been exonerated from death rows across the United States. Five of them were released from North Carolina's death row.

Executions have been on hold in North Carolina anyway because of a different debate over doctors' roles in the process. In January, the Medical Board re-wrote its ethics policy, saying it would punish any doctor who took part in an execution. That case is still held up in the courts.

Meanwhile, this week the American Bar Association said it wanted the death penalty halted across the United States because of the way evidence and testimony had been handled in several death penalty cases.

Learn more about the death penalty.

Former death row inmate to speak

Ray Krone, a former death-row inmate exonerated by DNA evidence, speaks about his experience.

By Jimmy Ryals jryals@coxnc.com
The Daily Reflector

Friday, November 02, 2007

Juan Melendez, Ray Krone and Ryan Matthews spent a combined 26 years on death row for murders they didn't commit.

Krone, Melendez and Pauline Matthews — Ryan's mother — are sharing their stories in Greenville this week. Melendez will speak at a 7 p.m. mass Sunday at the Newman Center, the Catholic ministry at East Carolina University. Krone and Matthews sat for interviews Wednesday at The Daily Reflector's office.

All three are appearing on behalf of a pair of anti-death penalty advocacy groups. Witness to Innocence, based in Philadelphia, and People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, headquartered in Carrboro.

Krone, communications director for Witness to Innocence, was convicted in 1992 of killing a female bartender in Phoenix, Ariz. Prosecutors tied Krone to the stabbing with a set of bite marks on the woman's chest, Krone said; an expert testified that the indentions matched his own crooked teeth, shaped by a childhood car crash.

Over the next three years, Krone became a regular in a prison law library, looking for a way to change his fate. In 1995, the Arizona Court of Appeals vacated his conviction, finding that prosecutors failed to share evidence with the defense before presenting it in court. A second trial yielded the same guilty verdict, despite evidence that the bite marks didn't come from Krone, he said. The judge in his retrial had enough questions to sentence him to life in prison.

"As bad as it was the first time, this was the worst because I still believed in the system," Krone said. "The truth did come out ... and they found me guilty."

In 2001 came a break. A new Arizona law expanded convicts' access to DNA evidence. Improbably, clothing from the victim in Krone's case was still in police possession. Krone's attorneys had the clothes analyzed; saliva on it matched a man serving 10 years in prison for rape. In 2002, Krone was finally released. He was the 100th person freed from death row in the United States.

Matthews' son has a similar story. In 1999, 17-year-old Ryan and a friend were charged with a robbery and murder at a store in Jefferson Parish, La. An eyewitness claimed to have followed the killers from the scene, Matthews said. Ryan's car resembled one a witness saw leaving the store. The witness claimed to have seen Ryan and another boy leaving.

That story had holes, Matthews said Wednesday. Ryan was miles away from the store when the murder happened, she said. The shirt purportedly discarded by the murderers was too small for him, and no DNA pulled from it or a ski mask matched Ryan's. Further, the windows in Ryan's car were frozen shut, she added.

"There was no way he could have jumped through that window," Pauline Matthews said. Witnesses, experts and the previous owner of Ryan's car testified to that fact during the trial two years later.

Despite the lack of physical evidence, Ryan was convicted and sentenced to death, Matthews said. For five years, he lived on death row in Louisiana. In 2004, his break came: another inmate bragged about committing a murder around the same time as the one Ryan was convicted for. Ryan's attorneys had DNA from that crime analyzed and compared to some from the other man's previous crime. The samples matched; Ryan was freed.

Krone and Matthews are putting their pain to work for an end to capital punishment in America.

For Krone, arguing against the death penalty is nearly a full-time job. He does regular media appearances and has testified before Congress.

Matthews, whose son chooses not to discuss his time on death row, is a less frequent traveler but is no less passionate.

Both say flaws in the justice system — unaccountable prosecutors, incompetent public defenders, racially stacked juries — contributed to their heartaches. But fixing those problems won't make the death penalty itself any more acceptable, both said.

"If we can't make it perfect, and it's pretty much impossible for us to make anything perfect, then we can't have a punishment that we can't fix later on, that we can't be man enough, woman enough, adult enough, mature enough to say we know we make mistakes," Krone said.

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