June 29 USA: Ray Krone, of Dover, Pa., was freed from death row after DNA cleared him in a murder. For ex-death-row inmates, freedom can be grim reality Once known as the "Snaggletooth Killer" when he was on Arizona's death row, Ray Krone got an Extreme Makeover after DNA cleared him in a 1991 murder. He has addressed the United Nations, toured Europe to protest the death penalty, mingled with celebrities, and even attracted his own groupies. Nick Yarris, released from Pennsylvania's death row last year after DNA exonerated him in a 1981 rape and murder in Delaware County, has been on a similar odyssey, speaking at college campuses and telling his story on TV programs and in an award-winning documentary. Such journeys from prison to prominence are not unlike the experiences of other members of this new and growing population of those who have been exonerated of crimes, especially those released from death row. They are courted here and abroad to speak at anti-death-penalty, social-justice, and academic forums, where audiences are spellbound by their horrifying accounts. But the exciting travels and high-profile invitations are a distraction from the grim realities of life after prison. Longtime inmates have lost jobs, homes, and, often, their families. They carry the emotional scars of prison and the Kafkaesque trip through the court system as well as the stresses of returning to society. Some revert to past problems such as alcohol and drug abuse. "Emotionally and psychologically, it's a roller-coaster ride," said James C. McCloskey, who heads Centurion Ministries, a Princeton organization whose efforts have led to the exoneration of 36 people. "It's like they're a Martian coming down to Earth." Krone said his travels have been an enjoyable distraction. He recalled carrying a banner in a death-penalty protest in Montreal, next to famous activists Bianca Jagger and Catherine Deneuve, and looking back in wonder at the thousands of people behind them. Life outside prison "was a whole new world or other planet," Krone said in an interview at his home in Dover, Pa., south of Harrisburg. This month, Krone was back in the spotlight - at a community forum on the death penalty in Mount Holly. His story transfixed the audience of about 30 at Sacred Heart Church, as he explained how DNA tests of blood on the victim's clothing cleared him and implicated a man already convicted of a sex offense. "This is part of my therapy, I think, being able to speak about it," he told the group. The use of DNA testing is perhaps the most important advancement in modern criminology: It helps catch the guilty and absolve the innocent. But the increasing number of people who have now been exonerated nationwide for all crimes - estimated to be about 350 since 1989 - raises societal questions of whether and how to compensate inmates who have been cleared, and how to smooth the transition back to society. About 19 states, including New Jersey, have laws to compensate for the lost years. In Pennsylvania, State Reps. Michael McGeehan and James Roebuck (D., Phila.) have introduced legislation that would compensate those exonerated of crimes who served time in Pennsylvania prisons, and pay for counseling and other services to help ease the readjustment. Former prisoners also would get $50,000 for every year spent on death row. Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a Tennessee death row inmate's appeal in a case that could provide guidance for when prisoners convicted before DNA testing was available should get a new chance to prove their innocence. Krone, who returned home to York County after his release, has won a $1.4 million judgment from Maricopa County in Arizona, but he said that most of it went to lawyer fees and other debts from his years of appeals. Ernest Duff, executive director of the California-based Life After Exoneration Program, started in 2003 to help the growing number of people cleared of crimes, said that the newly exonerated often suffer from depression, anxiety and posttraumatic stress. "It's very, very lonely, very disorienting, and, for many, it's ultimately frustrating to the point that some of them wish they were back inside," Duff said. Krone, now 48, said he couldn't even sleep on a bed when he first got out because he was accustomed to sleeping on a concrete or metal frame, and he found himself subconsciously avoiding fences because prisoners were barred from walking near fences. Even now, he said, he has a problem believing in people. "Trust is an issue," he said. But Krone, a postal worker with no criminal record who stayed in Phoenix when he got out of the Air Force, said he was fortunate because he had the unwavering support of family and friends back home who prayed, wrote and believed in him, and that helped a lot. For people without that kind of support - especially those who were very young when they went to prison - life can be very difficult. Although many have little trouble attracting sympathetic women, relationships can be difficult to manage on top of the other stresses of readjustment. One man released from Florida's death row after 16 years, for example, was sentenced last year to 2 years back in prison for assaulting his wife of 4 months. Yarris, who grew up in Southwest Philadelphia and spent 22 years on Pennsylvania's death row, said he felt as if he had been stuck in a "time warp" and emerged from prison feeling much like the 20-year-old he was when he entered. "I paid for every stupid mistake I ever made 3 times over," Yarris told a class at Princeton University last fall. Yarris insists that he is not angry, though people who know him say that he is struggling with resentment over the lost time - 8,057 days on death row. He has a federal lawsuit pending against Delaware County. Last month, he married a woman who had heard him speak last year in England. And they have settled there while Yarris writes a book. He was featured in a documentary, After Innocence, which won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival this year. He declined to comment for this article, saying in an e-mail that he now prefers to "concentrate" on the European news media so as not to take "time away from writing my book." His Web site is _www.nickyarris.com_ (http://www.nickyarris.com/) . His mother, Jayne Yarris, who lives in Southwest Philadelphia, said her son was a bundle of nerves when he was released. He ate quickly, talked nonstop, and had to reacquaint himself with all sorts of normal lifestyle matters. "It is really a rough, rough time," she said. She said she worried about his readjustment: "When you're pushed in the door, they control your life. When they throw you out, they don't care." She said England is a good change. "England knows him as Nick and not as the one who got off death row." Krone said that "a lot of anger and frustration" comes from being falsely accused. He was convicted, got a new trial, then was convicted again because of testimony that his crooked teeth had left a bite mark on the victim's breast. Krone said he had always been sensitive about his crooked teeth, so when the Extreme Makeover TV show offered him a new smile and other cosmetic surgery, he accepted the offer. The show is set to be rerun tomorrow. Krone said that life is good in York County. He helps out friends with odd jobs, and largely earns a living from speaking engagements. He said he believes he has adjusted pretty well. "I think I'm doing OK with my relationship with family and friends," he said. Krone wants to remain in the limelight for as long as possible to keep the pressure on those who snagged him for a horrific crime that he did not commit. "I want to keep this going as long as I can until they acknowledge their mistakes," he said. (source: Philadelphia Inquirer) ALABAMA: URGENT ACTION APPEAL 28 June 2005 UA 177/05 Death Penalty/Legal concern USA (ALABAMA) Anthony Ray Hinton (m) Anthony Hinton, black, aged 49, has been on death row in Alabama for 19 years for crimes he may not have committed. Three leading experts have concluded that the state's crucial ballistics evidence at the trial was wrong. Hinton's lawyers have recently filed an appeal in the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals seeking to get his conviction and death sentence overturned. If this fails, the case will go to the federal courts. Because of the deference that federal courts are required to give state court decisions in the USA, the current appeal is seen as his best chance to obtain a judicial remedy for his claim of innocence. In 1985, there were several robberies of fast food restaurants in and around Birmingham, Alabama. During one, in February 1985, night manager John Davidson was fatally shot. An assistant manager of another restaurant, Thomas Vason, was shot and killed on 2 July 1985. Then, on 25 July, Sidney Smotherman, the night manager of Quincy's restaurant, was shot, but survived. He later identified Anthony Hinton as his assailant from a police photo line-up. However, there are serious questions about the reliability of this identification. Smotherman had originally described to police someone substantially smaller than Hinton. Furthermore, on the night of the crime, he had initially thought that a passing driver who offered help was the assailant. He later misidentified this man's car, described his attackers as "they", and gave varying descriptions of the weapon used to shoot him. Research shows that eyewitness identifications, especially where the circumstances are traumatic and the identification cross-racial, as in this case, are unreliable. Police took a .38 revolver belonging to Anthony Hinton's mother, Beulah Hinton, from her home, and sent it to the state Department of Forensic Sciences (DFS) to be tested against the six bullets recovered from the three crime scenes. The DFS concluded that the gun had fired the bullets. Anthony Hinton was charged with the murders of John Davidson and Thomas Vason. The only evidence linking Hinton to those two crimes was the DFS ballistics evidence. The trial court only approved $500 for the defense to do its own ballistics investigation. The defense lawyer was forced to hire a visually-impaired civil engineer with no firearms identification expertise. Anthony Hinton had no history of violent crime, maintained his innocence, and even passed a police lie detector test. On the night of the Quincy's shooting, he had been at his workplace, a secure warehouse, 15 miles (24km), or at least 20 minutes' drive from the crime scene. His employer and co-workers confirmed that he had arrived at the security gate at 11.57pm, clocked in to work at midnight, been given a work assignment at 12.10am, checked by his supervisor at 12.40am, and again at least once every hour during the six-hour shift. The Smotherman crime began at 12.14am. However, the jury convicted Anthony Hinton and sentenced him to death. Alabama provides no legal assistance to indigent death row prisoners so it took Anthony Hinton years to obtain volunteer counsel to challenge his conviction. Finally, in June 2002, an evidentiary post-conviction hearing was held in the trial court. Three of the USA's leading gun experts, who had examined and tested the state's evidence, testified at the hearing. They concluded that the bullets recovered from the three crime scenes could not be matched to Beulah Hinton's gun. They also concluded that the bullets could not be linked to a single weapon. Anthony Hinton's appeal lawyers have also discovered work reports contradicting the DFS examiners' contention that they were able to match the bullets to Beulah Hinton's gun. These reports were not provided to Hinton's trial lawyer. At the trial, Sidney Smotherman had said that he had left Quincy's shortly after midnight, bought food at a nearby store, and soon after leaving there had been forced at gunpoint to return to Quincy's where the shooting occurred. At the June 2002 hearing, a Quincy's employee who was working with Smotherman on the night of the robbery testified that the time the restaurant was locked varied from night to night, and sometimes occurred as early as 11pm.This further undermined the state's theory that Anthony Hinton had planned the crime and its timing, and had left his work to wait for Smotherman to close Quincy's. The state's theory suggests that Hinton drove from the warehouse to Quincy's in less than five minutes, was away from work for at least an hour and was not missed. Two and a half years after the June 2002 hearing, the trial court ruled against Anthony Hinton. That decision is now on appeal to the state Court of Criminal Appeals. The state has been repeatedly asked by Anthony Hinton's lawyers to re-examine its evidence against him, but it has so far refused to do so. The United Nations Safeguards Guaranteeing Protection of the Rights of Those Facing the Death Penalty (1984) state: "Capital punishment may be imposed only when the guilt of the person charged is based upon clear and convincing evidence leaving no room for an alternative explanation of the facts." On the current evidence, Anthony Hinton's death sentence clearly violates this standard. The US capital justice system is marked by arbitrariness, discrimination and error. Since executions resumed in the USA in 1977, more than 100 people have been released from death rows around the country on grounds of innocence, five of them in Alabama. Other people have been executed despite serious doubts about their guilt in the crimes for which they were sentenced to death. RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible: - expressing sympathy for the family and friends of John Davidson and Thomas Vason; - expressing deep concern, however, that the state continues to seek the execution of Anthony Hinton despite serious doubts about the reliability of his conviction; - noting that three of the USA's leading gun experts have concluded that the state's ballistics evidence at trial was wrong, and noting that this evidence was the only evidence linking Hinton to the two robberies at which the two murders occurred; - noting the evidence against Anthony Hinton was only ever circumstantial, and now it appears to be entirely unreliable; - urging that the state re-examine its evidence against Anthony Hinton as the defense has requested; - urging the Governor to ask the Attorney General to drop his opposition to judicial relief for Anthony Hinton, on the grounds that serious error occurred at the trial. APPEALS TO: Governor Bob Riley State Capitol 600 Dexter Ave Montgomery AL 36130 Fax: 1 334 353 0004 Email: http://www.governor.state.al.us/contact/contact_for m.aspx Salutation: Dear Governor PLEASE COPY ALL YOUR LETTERS TO: Attorney General Troy King Office of the Attorney General Alabama State House 11 South Union Street, Third Floor Montgomery AL 36130 Fax: 1 334 353 3637 If possible, please also send a copy to the following US Senator (from Alabama) asking him to use his influence to seek to prevent a possible miscarriage of justice in his home state: United States Senator Jeff Sessions Office of Senator Jeff Sessions 335 Russell Senate Office Building Washington DC 20510-0104 Fax: 1 202 224-3149 Email: http://sessions.senate.gov/contact.htm PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY. Amnesty International is a worldwide grassroots movement that promotes and defends human rights. This Urgent Action may be reposted if kept intact, including contact information and stop action date (if applicable). Thank you for your help with this appeal. Urgent Action Network Amnesty International USA PO Box 1270 Nederland CO 80466-1270 Email: u...@aiusa.org http://www.amnestyusa.org/urgent/ Phone: 303 258 1170 Fax: 303 258 7881 ---------------------------------- END OF URGENT ACTION APPEAL ----------------------------------
