Oct. 13 USA: Life after death row In 1992 Ray Krone, a former sergeant in the US Air Force, was sentenced to death row for the murder of Kimberly Ancona, a bar manager found stabbed to death in a restaurant near his home in Arizona. 10 years later, after running newly developed DNA tests on the victim's clothes, he was found innocent and freed. Krone was the 100th prisoner in the US to be exonerated from death row. Now a campaigner against the death penalty, he describes the long fight to clear his name Being arrested was quite a surprise. On the day they found the body, they brought me in to the police station and questioned me for 3 hours. I told them everything I knew and thought that would be the end of it. The next day they brought me to the police station to take blood and hair samples, as well as dental casts of my teeth, and they questioned me for yet another three hours. But again, I told them the truth. I knew I had nothing to hide. The next day was New Years Eve, December 31, 1991; I'd just got home and was in my driveway, getting out of my car, when all of a sudden a van screeched up behind me, the doors flew open and people were shouting "Freeze! Don't move!" Armed officers in full riot gear spilled out of the van and arrested me right there. Without any real evidence or any scientific support for it, the lead detective decided that I was guilty, and he acted on it quickly. I worked at the post office and it wasn't as if I was going anywhere. But within 2 days the analysis had come back confirming that my fingerprints, footprints and hair had been found on the victims body. That stuff couldn't possibly have come back from the lab in 2 days. I knew the fingerprints and strands of hair at the crime scene weren't mine. The footprints were of size 9 shoes and I'm a size 11. DNA testing wasn't as prevalent then as it is now and they simply said that whatever prints didnt match mine had nothing to do with the murder. The size 9 footprints at the crime scene were not only found in the kitchen where the murder weapon a butcher's knife was taken from, but they were also on the floor tiles next to where the body was discovered. I found out later that whoever made the initial police report had changed the killer's footprints to a size 11 to make it fit my profile, and when they went to my house they couldn't match them to any of my shoes. But then they found a local medical examiner who would testify that the bite marks on her body matched my teeth. It didn't matter what I said after that. It was like the frustration you feel when you're a kid and your parents blame you for something your brother or sister did, only this time it was a sharper intensity of pain and lasted for a lot longer. I was in contact with my sister regularly. I would tell her: "Don't worry about it, I'll be out of here any minute." 7 months went by and I was put on trial for murder, but I was still telling her it would all work out. Then I got convicted and sent to death row. That was when it became a heck of a burden on my mom and my family. I was the oldest in the family, and had always been the responsible one my folks knew to trust me if I said everything would be all right. Death row changed that. When you get sent to death row you're in a little cell the size of most people's bathroom and youre kept separate from all the other inmates. You can see them in the distance and yell out to them, but you don't have any physical contact. I realised in a short time that if I was going to fight the system Id better get to know it. I started going to the law library, reading up on case law. Eventually it became known that the prosecutor had been withholding evidence and the Arizona Supreme Court granted me a new trial. The judge convicted me again, but said that there was lingering doubt of my guilt and sentenced me to life imprisonment instead of death row. In 2001 a new law was passed making it easier for inmates to request DNA testing. The police still had items of the victim's clothing so I asked the judge if I could have them tested. The prosecutor objected, as did the attorney generals office, but nevertheless the judge ordered that it go ahead. The Phoenix police department put some of the DNA into the nationwide data bank, which is where the DNA of convicted felons all over the US is stored, and it came back with a match. It was a man who had a history of sexual assaults on women and children and lived 500 feet from the bar in which the murder took place. I remember that day clearly from start to finish. It was April 8, 2002. A Friday. It began as just another day in prison but at noon I was told my attorney was on the phone. He asked me how I was doing and I said: "Oh you know, fine, just another day in paradise." He laughed and said: "What are you hungry for, Ray?" and I said that I guessed I'd eat whatever was in the chow hall. But he kept on and said: "No really, you want steak, seafood? How about a Margarita?" I asked him what the devil he was talking about and thats when he said: "I just got off the phone with the prosecutor's office. They're cutting the paperwork. You're going home today." My heart stopped; I couldn't breathe. 2 hours later I walked out of prison. I kept looking over my shoulder in case theyd made a mistake. What that prosecutor did, hiding evidence while at the same time actively pursuing the death penalty for me, could be seen as attempted murder. When I found out that he had covered up so much evidence and was still alleging that I got away with murder, even after I was released, I started talking to attorneys. I figured that this monster was never going to let me live, not as a free and innocent person anyway. I took out a lawsuit against him and after 3 years he settled with me or rather the city and the county settled. We couldn't sue him; we had to sue his supervisors for not training and supervising him. The day I got out of prison was the day I won justice for myself and my family and for all those friends and people who had stood up and defended me when the rest of the world was entitled to say "That guy's a murderer." I didn't want to let any of those people down by coming out angry and negative; what I wanted was for my family to feel safe again, and proud of what they had stood for all those years. I wanted them to be proud of me. My life started over again at the age of 45, and I walked out of prison to the distinction of being the 100th person in this country to have been exonerated from death row. There were a lot of anti-death penalty groups out there waiting for that milestone, and there was a lot of press coverage. One of the reporters asked me: "Mr Krone, given your faith in God, how do you justify Him leaving you in prison for 10 years?" I wasn't sure how to answer a deep, soul-searching question like that and my mind went completely blank. Then suddenly it came to me and I said: "Well, maybe it's not about those 10 years in prison. Maybe it's about what I have to do in the next 10 years." So later on, when I had more time to think about it, I thought that maybe I was right, that maybe there was a reason why at the age of 35, when I thought I was running my life, everything suddenly flew out of control. I thought that this could be bigger than me, that there could be a reason why I was arrested, and why I got out of prison on the day I did. So I've been travelling around the country speaking to people about it and trying to raise awareness, because if it can happen to me it can happen to anybody. It's part therapy being able to talk about it not keeping it inside where it can blow up one day and it's also important to feel that something good can come out of my experiences. People are beginning to realise that the justice system can make terrible mistakes and condemn innocent people. I didn't see this as a career, and I certainly didn't plan on being a motivational speaker or an activist against the death penalty, but in the same way that some people go to college for 10 years to become doctors or lawyers, it does give my time on death row some sense of purpose. Ray Krone is now a director of Witness to Innocence , an organisation that campaigns against the death penalty. He was interviewed by Anna Bruce-Lockhart. (source: The Guardian Weekly) OHIO: As her killer nears execution, Dawn McCreery's loved ones remember her zest for life A few months ago, Rob McCreery dreamed his sister, Dawn McCreery, was sitting on the couch with his 5-year-old daughter. As vivid as the dream was, he knew something was wrong. His sister and daughter could not possibly play and laugh together. Dawn McCreery has been dead for 22 years. She was brutally murdered in the woods outside Akron with her fellow Alpha Delta Pi sorority sister, Wendy Offredo. But that dream should have been real, Rob McCreery said. His sister, who was 20 when she died, should have been there to play with his children, attend weddings, witness triumphs and tragedies both large and small. "There's always that blank spot standing next to you," he said. "She's not there, and she should be." One of the two men convicted of killing the sorority sisters, Richard Cooey, is supposed to face justice Tuesday, when he is scheduled to be executed after years of increasingly desperate and sometimes bizarre efforts to save his own life. The other killer, Clint Dickens, who was ineligible for the death penalty because he was 17 at the time of the murders, is serving a life sentence. Not just a victim "The world knows Dawn as a murder victim, but she was so much more," said Katherine Miracle, her big sister in the sorority. Rob McCreery, now 39 and living in Rocky River, said his older sister had a wonderful sense of humor, which was evident even when she was picking on him. "She had me convinced for a long time the bathtub monster was going to get me," he said. He spoke fondly of the time he went out to get some feeder fish for the piranhas he used to keep and returned to their North Ridgeville home to find signs saying "Goldfish beware" that Dawn had posted all over the house. Rob McCreery and his father, Bob McCreery Sr., both said Dawn loved family vacations. Bob said his daughter enjoyed a trip to Greenfield Village near Detroit just after she finished 2nd grade. "Dawn was a fun-loving girl," he said. For Rob, a trip to the Grand Canyon stands out among all the trips they took together. He said his outspoken sister wasn't one to simply take in the sights. She wanted to see the world. "If there was a river to cross, it had to be crossed," he said. That adventurous spirit wasn't confined to vacations. Rob said his sister was "very outgoing, very friendly, always making up songs." He said she dyed her hair a purplish-red in high school and was one of the 1st girls in school to take a mechanical drawing class. Fashion-bound After she graduated from high school, Dawn McCreery went to the University of Akron to study fashion and business, her brother said. He said she had a great sense for clothes and could spend $10 in a thrift store and come up with a knockout outfit, a talent that led to her being named best-dressed in her sorority. She was working as a waitress at a Brown Derby restaurant, but she was going to go far when she graduated, said Miracle, who believes Dawn McCreery may have even become her partner in the public relations firm she now runs. "Dawn was someone who would have made an impact on society," Miracle said. Rob McCreery said his sister wanted to travel, particularly to fashion capitals London and New York. Both Rob McCreery and Miracle described Dawn as a creative person. Miracle said her friend wrote poetry, while Rob said his sister was a gifted artist. The worst day But Dawn's hopes and dreams were not to be. Nor were those of 21-year-old Wendy Offredo. On Sept. 1, 1986, the sorority sisters had finished their shift at the Brown Derby and were headed to a bar popular with University of Akron students. They never made it. Police say Dickens and Cooey, who was 19 and home on leave from the Army, dropped a chunk of concrete onto the women's car, then offered to help them. Dickens and Cooey even let them make phone calls to the police and family before taking them into the woods where they beat, strangled, raped, robbed and killed the friends. Miracle said she was supposed to have been with Dawn that night, but a disagreement led to them cancelling their plans. "I carried a lot of guilt," she said. "That night would it have been different if I had been in the car?" Rob McCreery, who was 17 at the time, said that the day Dawn's body was found he went to meet her to help her move, but she never showed up. <>P> "She was little bit of a ditz, a little bit of an airhead, so we didn't think much of it," he said. He had seen her just days before. "2 nights before she was taken, she came home and she, me and a buddy stayed up until 3 in the morning just laughing," he said. But when he got home from Akron, he found out the North Ridgeville police had been to his house. He said he drove to the police station alone to see what was wrong and learned the horrible fate of his sister. He had to call his mother and stepfather, who were vacationing in Missouri at the time. "It was the hardest call I've ever had to make to this day," he said. Miracle said she returned to the sorority house to find police cars outside and her sorority sisters waiting to deliver the bad news. Waiting on justice Cooey and Dickens were both convicted of the murderers, but Cooey has fought tooth-and-nail to stay alive. Rob McCreery's wife, Nicole, said she thinks Cooey fears what awaits him after he dies. "I just think he's afraid there's really a hell," she said. Rob said he's ready to put Richard Cooey out of his life. He dreads the possibility that Tuesday's execution could be derailed, as it was in 2003, by a last minute stay from a court. "I'm looking forward to never having to think about it again," he said. "It won't bring her back, but at least itll be the justice we've been looking for for so long." Bob McCreery said he and his daughter had been estranged in the years before her death. He had hoped to reconnect with her, but it never happened. Now, he said, he wants Cooey to die for robbing him of that chance. "I just want to get this over with," he said, but he, too, expects Cooey to continue his last-minute appeals to avoid lethal injection in the state's death house in Lucasville. Rob McCreery said nothing will ever take away the pain of his sister's death. "I know she was ready to start her life, not end her life," he said. (source: The Chronicle-Telegram)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, OHIO
Rick Halperin Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:11:35 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, OHIO Rick Halperin
- [Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, OHIO Rick Halperin