[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, GA., FLA., ARIZ., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Aug. 3



TEXAS----former female death row inmate dies

Cathy Lynn Henderson, babysitter convicted of murder, dies in hospital


Cathy Lynn Henderson, who dominated national headlines in 1994 for the the 
killing of 3-month-old Brandon Baugh, died Sunday after a month of 
hospitalization, her lawyer said Monday. She was 58.

Once just 2 days away from execution, the former babysitter spent nearly 2 
decades in prison before winning a new trial in 2012. On June 12, just months 
before her case was to go to trial a 2nd time, Henderson hobbled into the 
courtroom on crutches with the help of her lawyers and pleaded guilty to 
murder. She was sentenced then to 25 years in prison, but with credit for time 
served, she could have been released in 4 years.

Henderson was taken to the hospital on June 24 after she had trouble with her 
breathing. She was diagnosed with pneumonia and had a stroke during her stay.

"Cathy Lynn Henderson passed away last night, at peace and without pain," her 
lawyer, Jon Evans, told the American-Statesman. "In the last few weeks of her 
life she was relieved of a 21-year burden. Her version of the events of the 
tragedy of Brandon Baugh finally was given the proper respect and credence it 
deserved. She passed with that satisfaction."

A sharply divided Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Henderson's capital 
murder conviction and sentence in December 2012. The court upheld a 
recommendation by District Judge Jon Wisser that she have a new trial based on 
new scientific discoveries into the nature of head injuries.

Henderson claimed that Baugh died after slipping from her arms and falling 
about 4 feet to the concrete floor in her home in the Pflugerville area. She 
said she panicked, burying the boy's body in a Bell County field before fleeing 
to Missouri, where she was found and arrested 11 days later.

Some supporters of the Baugh family said they were relieved to see Henderson 
plead guilty after years of lies and denials. But Brandon's parents, 
grandmother and sister said they had been surprised and disappointed to learn 
she would not face a jury once more.

"I have no doubts that your plea today is not an act of contrition but another 
act of selfishness in order to gain your freedom," Brandon's father, Eryn 
Baugh, told Henderson on the witness stand on the day she took her plea.

(source: American-Statesman)

**************

73% of Inmates who Die in Jail Haven't been Convicted of a Crime


Being arrested for a crime isn't supposed to be the same thing as being 
convicted, yet many people awaiting trial suffer the ultimate penalty - death - 
while they're in custody.

A report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) shows that 73% of those who 
die in jail haven't been convicted of a crime. In addition, 29% of those who 
die are African-American, more than double their percentage of the U.S. 
population at large.

Studies have shown that black people are more likely to be held while awaiting 
trial, partly because they are assigned higher bail amounts, by thousands of 
dollars, than whites are. For that reason, African-Americans are more likely to 
be stuck in jail awaiting trial even for minor offenses.

BJS found that 31.3% of all jail deaths in 2012 were by suicide.

Texas jailers appear to show a particular indifference towards life. There have 
been 140 suicides in Texas jails since September 2009, according to the Houston 
Chronicle. That's 1 every 2 weeks. Inmates with known mental problems, even 
those who have attempted before to take their own lives, are put into cells 
with the same means to suicide that they used previously. Not surprisingly, 
some inmates take full advantage of those second chances at death. But 
identifying at-risk inmates is the key.

"What is issued in the cell is secondary to properly identifying an individual 
that may have suicidal ideations," Brandon Wood, director of the Texas 
Commission on Jail Standards, told the Chronicle. "After reviewing deaths in 
custody over the last few years, we keep identifying lapses in observation and 
proper screening."

(source: allgov.com)






GEORGIA:

Fulton DA seeks death penalty in case of accused cop killer


The Fulton County District Attorney's Office confirms that the District 
Attorney is seeking the death penalty in the case against a man accused of 
killing a Fulton County police detective.

Investigators said Detective Terence Avery Green was shot in the back of the 
head just after midnight on March 4 after he and other officers responded to 
"shots fired" calls from neighbors in a Fairburn subdivision.

Police said the suspect, Amanuel Menghesha, went on a rampage in his 
neighborhood, allegedly firing an AK-47 into people's homes. Police fired back 
at him, injuring the suspect.

Menghesha is charged with murder, possession of a firearm and aggravated 
assault of a police officer after he allegedly shot Green.

Thousands of law enforcement officers from all over the country paid their 
respects for Detective Green following the shooting.

Green grew up in the Atlanta area. He studied criminal justice at Morris Brown 
and his only law enforcement post was for Fulton County. He served 22 years.

Green was a father of four adult sons and was engaged.

(source: myfoxatlanta.com)






FLORIDA:

Fla. death penalty case could be dismissed due to questions of speedy trial 
rights----Corey Jamaine Dozier, 35, has been charged with the 1st-degree murder 
of his 27-year-old girlfriend, Shelly Desravines


A man facing the death penalty in Jacksonville may end up going free because of 
questions on whether his right to a speedy trial was violated.

Corey Jamaine Dozier, 35, has been charged with the 1st-degree murder of his 
27-year-old girlfriend, Shelly Desravines. Prosecutors argue that Dozier should 
be executed for the murder, and also charge him with grand theft auto and the 
attempted murder of a man who was shot at the same time that Desravines was 
killed.

Dozier went to South Carolina while police were looking for him in Florida.

According to 2011 news reports, Dozier robbed a gas station along Interstate 95 
in South Carolina, crashed the car he'd taken from Desravines and then lay down 
along the pavement of Interstate 26 as a ruse and hijacked the car of a couple 
who stopped to help.

He drove toward Charleston until he was arrested.

Dozier received word he would face criminal charges in Florida while in a South 
Carolina jail in 2012.

Dozier responded to that notification by asking to be sent back to Florida 
immediately to face the charges.

Dozier wrote to the warden of the prison where he was incarcerated in South 
Carolina, and then wrote the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, the Duval County 
Clerk of Court and the chief judge of the 4th Judicial Circuit. He did not 
write to the office of 4th Circuit State Attorney Angela Corey.

In those letters, Dozier invoked his right to speedy trial under the Interstate 
Agreement on Detainers Act, which requires different states to quickly transfer 
inmates when they face criminal charges in both states.

The letters were written between July 2012 and January 2013. He was not 
returned to Jacksonville until January 2014.

Upon his return, Dozier's attorneys motioned to throw out all of his criminal 
charges. Under Florida law someone charged with a crime has a right to a speedy 
trial within 180 days of being charged with the crime and Dozier's attorneys 
said he had been facing the charges for years without a trial.

In court filings, attorneys Waffa Hanania and Nicole Jamieson argued that their 
client???s speedy trial rights kicked in when he was informed that he faced 
charges, or when he wrote demanding to immediately return to Jacksonville to 
face the charges.

Prosecutors disagreed, and said Dozier hadn't been formally charged until he 
returned to Jacksonville.

Circuit Judge Suzanne Bass agreed with prosecutors. Dozier's lawyers appealed 
Bass' ruling to the 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee. Oral arguments 
in the case were held last week.

Jamieson argued that Dozier invoked his right to speedy trial multiple times to 
government officials, and that was sufficient even without notifying the 
prosecutors because the warden of the South Carolina prison was supposed to 
inform prosecutors of the request under the Interstate Agreement on Detainers 
Act.

But Judge Scott Makar, 1 of the 3 appellate judges hearing the case, expressed 
concern.

"So Florida would be out of luck due to the negligence of a South Carolina 
warden?" Makar said. "That concerns me."

Judge Ronald Swanson said Florida put a hold on Dozier in 2012 so South 
Carolina officials would know not to release him.

"A hold is placed on someone all the time," Swanson said. "They're not viewed 
as an arrest."

But Judge Stephanie Ray wondered why the notice sent to the Jacksonville 
Sheriff's Office wasn't sufficient to trigger the speedy trial right. The 
Sheriff's Office wrote Dozier back saying it couldn't help him, and did not 
forward his letter to prosecutors

Attorneys for both sides declined to discuss the case following oral arguments 
in front of the 1st District Court of Appeal last week.

The case could become an important precedent and senior officials with Corey's 
office and the office of Public Defender Matt Shirk were in attendance watching 
the oral arguments.

At the Times-Union's request Jeffrey Brown, an adjunct professor at Stetson 
University College of Law, former prosecutor and Tampa-based criminal defense 
attorney, reviewed the case.

Brown said he expected the appellate court to rule in favor of the prosecution.

"The statute is pretty clear that you have to contact the prosecuting attorney 
in situations like this," Brown said. "Dozier never did that."

If Dozier had directly notified the state attorney, it would be a different 
outcome, he said.

There is an argument that Dozier should get out because he notified other 
government officials, but judges will be reluctant to order the release of 
someone facing the death penalty when they have a valid excuse to keep him 
locked up, Brown said.

Dozier is not scheduled to get out of prison in South Carolina until 2020, 
according to the South Carolina Department of Corrections. If the appellate 
court ordered the Florida charges dismissed against him he would return to 
South Carolina to finish his sentence.

He was convicted of armed robbery, carjacking and kidnapping in South Carolina 
and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

(source: The Florida Times-Union)






ARIZONA:

Debra Milke's New World after Spending 23 Years on Death Row


In September 2013, 2 1/2 weeks after being released from custody, Debra Milke 
had a hearing in Maricopa County Superior Court.

She had spent 24 years behind bars and her eyes were wild, like those of an 
animal, as she backed into the corner of a crowded elevator, hugging the walls 
and shaking.

"I was trying to get used to people," she told The Arizona Republic in an 
exclusive interview last week. "I was trying not to hyperventilate."

Milke was a celebrated murderer, convicted of arranging the 1989 murder of her 
4-year-old son, Christopher.

Christopher was told he was going to the mall to see Santa Claus. Instead, he 
was taken into the desert by Milke's male roommate and one of his friends, and 
shot in the head.

Milke denied that she had any part in the murder, but a jury thought otherwise. 
She was sent to death row in 1991 and languished there until March 2013, when a 
federal appeals court threw out her conviction and her death sentence - not 
because she was exonerated, but because her constitutional rights had been 
violated. The prosecution and police had refused to turn over the spotty 
personnel record of a Phoenix police detective who claimed Milke had confessed 
to the arranged murder. There were no recordings or witnesses to prove the 
confession took place.

19 months after the federal appellate decision, an Arizona appeals court 
determined that it would constitute double jeopardy to retry her for the 
murder.

Now she lives free in a tile-roofed stucco house in a cookie-cutter development 
on the fringes of suburban Phoenix.

Her eyes have calmed, her face relaxed as she sits in a darkened room, shades 
drawn against the light.

She has gained 38 pounds.

"They don't have ice cream in prison," she said.

She speaks easily. She is friendly and talkative.

She was 25 and youthful when she went to prison. Now, at 51, she is 
white-haired and matronly.

"Half my life," she said, sighing. "I don't really mourn over that. I can't get 
the years back. I accept that. I accept my life as it is now."

Phoenix is a very different place than it was in 1989. Its population has 
swelled. So have its boundaries. The freeways baffle her. The supermarkets seem 
surreally large.

Technology has created gadgets that could not have been imagined in 1989.

Milke is trying to gain insight into who and where she is, like a time traveler 
from the 1980s who suddenly materialized in the second decade of the 21st 
century.

She still professes her innocence. Milke claims that she had nothing to do with 
her son's murder. But there is no evidence to show she was not involved.

She feels as if she straddles a fence on the death penalty, "a victim on both 
sides of it," calling herself the mother of a child who was murdered, who then 
spent half her life facing execution.

She doesn't need to see her co-defendants executed.

"It's not going to change anything," she said. "They're going to die in 
prison."

She feels she was treated unjustly by the legal system, and even the 
criminal-defense community is bitterly split on whether she is innocent or 
guilty.

This is not the story of that argument. Only Milke and the 2 men who took her 
son to the desert and killed him know what happened. And even then, they may 
have differing views. But they aren't talking anyway. While Milke is free, the 
other 2 remain on death row with little legal recourse standing between them 
and execution.

This is Milke's story about being inside, and then about being outside.

"Just imagine being locked in your bathroom for 24 years and no one will let 
you out," Milke said. "Just as I had to adapt to prison, now I have to adapt to 
freedom."

Learning to live in prison

In December 1989, Milke was recently divorced, and she and Christopher were 
living in Phoenix with a would-be suitor named James Styers.

In 1 version of the story, Milke wanted the hyperactive child out of her life, 
and in another version, Styers wanted him gone to improve his chances with 
Milke. So Styers enlisted a friend named Roger Scott, and on Dec. 3, 1989, they 
took the boy into the desert and shot him.

Styers and Scott drove to Metrocenter Mall in northwest Phoenix and told a 
security guard that the child was lost in the mall. Police didn't believe the 
story and Scott confessed, implicating Milke. Then he led police to the boy's 
body.

Milke was arrested at her parents' home in Florence and interrogated by Phoenix 
police Detective Armando Saldate. He claimed that Milke confessed her 
involvement in the murder. But there was no tape or video recording of the 
confession and no one else had witnessed it. Milke flatly denied she had 
confessed or that she had arranged her son's death.

Eventually, Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Noel Levy persuaded the jury to 
bring back a guilty verdict against Milke, and Superior Court Judge Cheryl 
Hendrix sentenced her to death.

Scott and Styers were also sentenced to death.

Milke no longer remembers which law-enforcement agency came for her on that 
February day in 1991 when she was taken from a Maricopa County jail to the 
Arizona State Prison Complex- Perryville in Goodyear.

She was a nervous wreck, and a jail doctor gave her an Ativan tablet to ease 
her anxiety before they loaded her into a car and drove her west on Interstate 
10.

"I just remember the freeway seemed endless," she said.

As she was led in handcuffs across the yards into the prison, she thought, "I'm 
not going to die here. I'm not going to live the rest of my life here. I'm 
going to get out."

She cried all through her 1st night, angry at "God and everybody."

Then she began to learn to live in prison.

Technically, she was on death row, but there was no such place in Perryville 
and she was its only occupant, and even then, it was only semantics. The next 
woman on death row, Wendi Andriano, who beat her husband to death, would not 
arrive until 2005. The third, Shawna Forde, an anti-immigrant vigilante 
involved in a double murder, followed in 2011.

So in 1991, Milke's cell-block neighbors were general-population prisoners who 
were being disciplined in maximum security: prostitutes and gang-bangers - bad 
girls, career criminals. Though officially deemed an ogre, unlike the others, 
Milke was a middle-class girl who had never been in trouble before.

She saw drug overdoses and fights.

"I've seen inmates on fire," she said, women who lit themselves in desperation 
and craziness. "I've seen a lot of crazy stuff."

Today, death-row prisoners, especially the men, spend 23 hours a day locked in 
their cells with little contact with other prisoners or the outside world.

Milke had a cell with a window in its door, and anyone in the unit could walk 
up to it and talk to her. She had 2 windows to the outside world on the other 
side of her cell, 1 of which opened about 2 inches.

She was treated like a trustee. After 2 in the afternoon, she was allowed to 
stay out of her cell until 9 p.m., even going outside in a fenced-in part of 
her unit. She was allowed to help the correctional officers with dinner. She 
took correspondence courses.

That changed after 1997, when corrections Officer Brent Lumley was murdered by 
a male inmate. Afterward, a new wing bearing Lumley's name was built at the 
Perryville prison, and the male prisoners were moved to Arizona State Prison 
Complex-Lewis near Buckeye.

Milke had to learn to live in lockdown.

"I had to have the window open around the clock," she said. "Otherwise I felt 
claustrophobic. I used to listen to the traffic on I-10 and watch the airplanes 
and wonder where they were going or coming from."

Even if she knew what day it was, she lost all sense of time, describing the 
days as a conveyor belt with 1 rolling into the next. She built a routine: 
writing from 5:30 to 6:30, then showering, cleaning supplies, TV shows, 
reading.

She taught herself algebra. She read books she should have read in school, by 
Leo Tolstoy and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

She became friends with Andriano, and the 1 talked through a vent between their 
cells. They would pass coffee or tea to each other during shift changes, when 
they were less likely to be seen, by rolling up pieces of paper and telescoping 
them together until they had long wands that would reach from one cell to the 
next.

"Every year it was all the same," she said. "It just melted one into another."

Appeal victory

Milke's case tracked through Arizona state courts without relief and then, as 
happens with capital cases, it bounced into federal court. Her attorneys had 
uncovered the sordid record of Detective Saldate, who had been fired from the 
Phoenix Police Department for his bad acts.

In March 2013, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out Milke's 
conviction and death sentence and ordered that she either be released or 
retried. The ruling noted that Saldate had a long history of misconduct that 
called his credibility into question.

On March 14, 2013, Milke said, she was lying on the floor of her cell talking 
to Andriano through the vent when a female correctional officer came with the 
news that one of her lawyers, Lori Voepel, was on the phone.

The first thing she said was, "We won."

"I just started shaking on the inside," Milke said. Voepel started to explain 
the ruling. "It went in one ear and out the other," Milke said.

It took until July before the state of Arizona decided to retry her and 
transfer her to a Maricopa County jail. The case went to the Maricopa County 
Attorney's Office, and County Attorney Bill Montgomery vowed to continue to 
seek the death penalty and send Milke back to Perryville.

Milke learned of the transfer the night before she would go. She packed some 
things, donated her TV and radio so that some other prisoner could have them 
and was sent to the Estrella Jail in south Phoenix.

Life in jail is harsher than life in prison - no windows, no TV, no clocks.

"You would ask what time it was and no one would tell you," she said.

She could not stomach the food. She was stressed by the noise. And when she 
would be taken to her court hearings, she looked as haggard and unkempt and 
wild as a witch in a fairy tale.

But on Sept. 6, 2013, Superior Court Judge Rosa Mroz ruled that Milke could be 
released on $250,000 bond. She was taken to Lower Buckeye Jail, where she 
changed into street clothes. Then her other lawyer, Michael Kimerer, secreted 
her away by car to Voepel's office, where a court officer affixed an electronic 
monitoring device to Milke's ankle.

"This bracelet means freedom to me," she told the officer.

She snacked on a vegetarian sandwich that had been brought in for her, because 
she craved vegetables. And on the way to a welcome-home party at a friend's 
home, they drove through a Starbucks restaurant because she had heard in prison 
that the coffee was wonderful.

"It was gross," she said.

Welcome to the 21st century, Debra Milke.

European Backing

Unlike many inmates released from prison, Debra Milke has a strong and wealthy 
support system, and it is centered in Europe.

Milke was born in Germany, and her parents moved back there and then on to 
Switzerland, where they lived the last of their lives. Milke's mother died 
after Milke was released from custody but before all charges were dropped, so 
she was not allowed to travel to Switzerland to see her mother on her death 
bed.

Capital punishment is illegal in Europe, and Europeans are stridently against 
its use elsewhere. There have been books and movies about Milke, and the 
French- and German-speaking media have assiduously followed her case.

In effect, she is perceived in Europe as Amanda Knox is perceived in the United 
States: a poor, innocent woman caught up in some unjust foreign judicial 
system.

(Knox and Milke, incidentally, have met.)

Subsequently, Milke's European supporters footed her bond, and she is living in 
the Phoenix-area home of a German friend.

But on her first night out of custody, she might just as well have still been 
on the inside.

She ventured timidly out into the house's backyard. The next night she dared 
step into the front yard. And on the 3rd day, her German friend took her for a 
walk around the block.

"It was strange. There were all these houses and cars," she said.

She was overwhelmed the 1st time she went to the supermarket. "I was amazed at 
how huge the stores had become and became panicky."

When she saw a woman and a young boy in one aisle, and heard the child say, 
"Mommy, I want this," she fell apart.

Her f1t trip to Walmart was worse. And the 1st dinner out at a sports bar was 
unbearable for the noise, the talking and the overstimulation. She panicked at 
the State Fair.

She couldn't bring herself to read or watch television because she had done so 
much in prison.

She bought a computer but left it in the box for a month, bought a flip phone 
and then eased into a smartphone but can't fathom the things she can do with 
it.

"It was odd to see everyone walking around with a phone, and strange and 
annoying walking around listening to everyone's conversations," she said. "I 
wanted to just turn around and tell them to shut up."

Because she was in isolation for so many years, she never got sick. Now she 
falls victim to every flu bug and suffers from allergies.

After 24 years of waiting to get back to life, it was difficult to know what to 
do because she was overwhelmed by options.

She got a dog. She toils in the garden of her friend's house.

Her attorneys persuaded her to go back to work and she found a job as a 
bookkeeper 5 days a week.

Mulling name change

In September 2014, the Arizona Court of Appeals dismissed all charges against 
Milke, ruling that retrying her would be tantamount to double jeopardy. The 
Arizona Supreme Court let the lower court decision stand. That freed Milke to 
travel and to move on in her life.

She will spend the next month in Europe, visiting with her remaining relatives 
there, fulfilling contractual obligations with German media, and traveling to 
Switzerland to visit her mother's grave and tend to her estate.

She has filed a lawsuit in federal court against the city of Phoenix, Maricopa 
County, County Attorney Montgomery, disgraced Detective Saldate and other 
police officers, alleging malicious prosecution and civil-rights violations.

She is considering changing her name. She wants to fade into the world but is 
worried that going to court to change names will call more attention to her and 
reveal her new identity anyway.

She says she knows where she wants to live - but won't tell so that she can 
become anonymous.

She is seeing a psychiatrist.

"I'm trying to figure out who I am today," she said. "I'm trying to figure out 
how to pick up the pieces and move ahead."

(source: WFMY news)






USA:

Loss of innocence: the experience of exonerated death row inmates


Juan Melendez spent 17 years, eight months, and one day on Florida's death row 
for a crime he did not commit, before being exonerated in 2002 when the 
transcript of a confession by the real murderer came to light - evidence that 
had been withheld by the prosecutor. Juan received no assistance and no 
compensation from the state of Florida in the wake of his exoneration.

Sabrina Butler was a Mississippi teenager convicted of murder and child abuse 
in the death of her nine-month-old son, Walter Dean. She was later exonerated 
of all wrongdoing when it was shown that Walter had probably died of a kidney 
condition and that the bruises on his body were the result of her and a 
neighbour's resuscitation attempts. Sabrina returned to her small town where 
everyone knew her as the "woman who had killed her son". No one would give her 
a job. The local prosecutor still maintained her guilt.

Greg Wilhoit was convicted in 1985 of murdering his wife after his attorney 
appeared in court drunk, vomited in the judge's chambers and presented no 
defence. He was convicted on the testimony of rookie dental "experts" who said 
bite marks on his wife's arm matched his teeth. At a retrial in 1993, the top 
US forensic odontologists testified that the mark could not possibly have come 
from Wilhoit. He was exonerated. He died in 2014 having received no 
compensation or even an apology from the state of Oklahoma.

The reasons to abolish the death penalty in the US are numerous: it does not 
deter; it is racially biased in application; it is used almost exclusively on 
the poor; it is more costly than life in prison; it is torture; and it 
hypocritically attempts to punish homicide by killing.

That said, no argument against the death penalty resonates more with Americans 
than the risk of executing an innocent person.

Discovery of innocence

Not until the late 1990s and 2000s did Americans begin to recognise the extent 
to which innocent people are convicted, incarcerated, and sentenced to death by 
our courts. This "discovery of innocence" was prompted, in part, by a new 
network of innocence projects, the use of DNA to exonerate the innocent, and a 
growing number of more public exonerations every year.

As a result, more than 1,600 wrongfully convicted individuals have been 
released in the US since 1989; 154 of those innocent individuals have been 
released from America's death rows.

As Americans have learned more about the innocent released from death row, they 
have become increasingly sceptical about the death penalty. Polls document that 
since the early 2000s Americans have serious concerns about the risk of 
executing an innocent person. That risk, even more so than lack of deterrence 
or even racial bias, remains the most powerful reason why individuals oppose 
the death penalty. Thus, as the public has become more aware of the innocent on 
death row, support for the death penalty has declined, reaching a 40-year low 
most recently.

In early June, Henry McCollum and Leon Brown received pardons for innocence 
from the governor of North Carolina after their wrongful convictions for the 
rape and murder of a young girl. Brown spent 10 of his 30 years in prison on 
North Carolina's death row while McCollum was on death row for all 30 years.

In a telling twist, Justice Antonin Scalia had used Henry McCollum as the 
exemplar case to justify his pro-death penalty stance two decades earlier. Like 
Scalia's argument, support for the death penalty appears to be unravelling.

Death row exonerees, including McCollum and Brown and Melendez, Butler, and 
Wilhoit, are living witnesses to the damaging effects of the death penalty and 
the huge risk we take when we give the state the power to punish with death. 
And while the flaws in our machinery of death are finally receiving overdue 
attention, the trauma experienced by the innocent who have suffered on 
America's death rows is overlooked.

A commonly believed myth is that exonerees receive compensation for their years 
wrongly incarcerated and assistance with reintegration. Yet, our research shows 
that many - if not most - death row exonerees return to their communities with 
little to no assistance with re-entry: no job training, no help finding 
housing, transportation, mental or physical healthcare, no compensation of any 
kind.

Turning the tide

The public often last see exonerees on the day of their exonerations - in the 
courtroom or outside the prison, embraced by family or friends with tears of 
joy flowing. We do not see them the day after exoneration when the next leg of 
their journey begins: the aftermath. They must work to rebuild a life taken 
from them while also confronting the pain and trauma caused by years of 
wrongful incarceration and the torment of facing execution.

In Life after Death Row: Exonerees' Search for Community and Identity, we 
published the 1st systematic study of the aftermath experiences of death row 
exonerees in the US.

Using in-depth interviews with 18 death row exonerees around the US, we explore 
their experiences as they return to their communities and families. They emerge 
into a world quite different from the one they left with limited (if any) 
resources to find a place to live and limited (if any) job skills to find 
employment.

They battle with employers over their felony status as their wrongful capital 
convictions are not automatically expunged. They require, but often do not have 
access to, medical and mental healthcare to address years of physical and 
psychological damage. They grieve family and friends lost while they were on 
death row, relationships lost, time lost. They struggle to manage the lack of 
trust, anger and depression that has festered as they sat on death row for 
crimes they did not commit.

Because of these innocent individuals released from America???s death rows, 
public concern about wrongful capital convictions is growing, which is turning 
the tide on support for the death penalty in the US. But the plight of those 
innocent men and women remains a problem in need of attention and solutions to 
restore the lives taken from them by a system that is broken.

(source: Saundra D Westervelt has received funding from the University of North 
Carolina Greensboro and the American Sociological Association for this 
research. She is a board member of Witness to Innocence, a non-profit comprised 
of death row exonerees around the US, and Healing Justice, a restorative 
justice program that aims to address the aftermath created by a wrongful 
conviction.

Kimberly Cook is affiliated with the NAACP, LINC (Leading Into New Communities 
- prisoner reentry program), and Healing Justice Project (a restorative justice 
program----The Conversation)