[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----N.C., FLA., MISS., OHIO, KAN., S.DAK., COLO., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 14



NORTH CAROLINA:

Amid claims of racial bias, N.C. inmate is released from death row


A judge has released a N.C. inmate from death row, amidst allegations that 
prosecutors illegally discriminated on the basis of race during jury selection.

After nearly 20 years on death row, 39-year-old Phillip Antwan Davis was 
re-sentenced on Friday to life in prison with no possibility of parole.

Davis was originally sentenced to death in the 1996 murders of his aunt and her 
daughter in Asheville.

An all-white jury sentenced Davis, who is black, to death after he pleaded 
guilty to the murders.

Prosecutors purposefully excluded the only qualified black juror from the 1997 
jury that decided Davis' sentence, according to the N.C. Center for Death 
Penalty Litigation.

Prosecutors in the case had attended a training session where they were taught 
to give excuses for striking jurors. In a news release issued Monday, the death 
penalty litigation center said that such excuses were used "to mask their 
intention of ridding the jury of African Americans."

It is illegal to strike jurors based on race.

When they excluded the black juror, prosecutors noted that she was wearing a 
cross earring and objected to her Tweetie Bird t-shirt, which they said 
indicated she didn't take the case seriously, the center said.

Buncombe County District Attorney Todd Williams, who was elected to that office 
in 2014, agreed that Davis should be re-sentenced to life without parole.

Williams cited several reasons, including Davis' age at the time of the crime, 
according to the Asheville Citizen-Times. Davis was 18 when he committed the 
murders. Had he been under 18, he would not have been eligible for the death 
penalty.

Williams also noted that Davis accepted responsibility for the murders and 
pleaded guilty to the crimes, the Citizen-Times story said.

In court on Friday, Davis expressed his continuing regret for the killings:

"To family members and anyone who knew Joyce and Caroline, they were 2 very 
special people who were loved by a lot of people including myself," Davis said. 
"I regret everything that happened and it's something I'll regret for the rest 
of my life."

(source: charlotteobserver.com)






FLORIDA:

Death sentence upheld for inmate who killed Fla. CO----Enoch Hall was sentenced 
to die for beating, strangling and stabbing CO Donna Fitzgerald


The Florida Supreme Court upheld the death sentence for a convicted rapist who 
killed a Tomoka prison correctional officer, but one justice dissented saying 
the decision ran afoul of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Enoch Hall, 47, was sentenced to die for beating, strangling and stabbing 
corrections officer Donna Fitzgerald at the Tomoka Correctional Institution on 
June 25, 2008, near Daytona Beach. Hall was serving 3 consecutive life 
sentences when he killed Fitzgerald, stabbing her 22 times with a makeshift 
knife. Fitzgerald was supervising Hall, a welder on a work crew. Her body was 
found over a cart and partly disrobed, which prosecutors said had shown Hall 
intended to rape her.

Now-retired Circuit Judge J. David Walsh in 2010 sentenced Hall to die after a 
jury unanimously recommended death. But last year in a case known as Hurst v. 
Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state's death sentencing 
process, ruling it was unconstitutional because it gave too much power to 
judges and not enough to juries.

In response to the Hurst decision, the state Supreme Court ruled that juries 
must unanimously find the existence of aggravating factors before a judge can 
impose death. It also held that the jury's recommendation for death must be 
unanimous. Florida had long required only a majority of jurors to recommend 
death before requiring a 10-2 vote until that was quickly struck down.

The state Supreme Court ruling released Thursday held that because the jury 
recommendation for death was unanimous in Hall's case then it was reasonable to 
believe that the jury unanimously found aggravating circumstances to support 
the death penalty in his case.

Chief Justice Jorge Labarga, and justices R. Fred Lewis, Barbara Pariente, 
Charles Canady and Ricky Polston upheld the death sentence. The justices also 
cited the "egregious facts" surrounding Fitzgerald's killing further indicated 
the jury unanimously found aggravating circumstances.

But Justice Peggy Quince dissented writing that his fellow justices were doing 
what the U.S. Supreme Court cautioned against in the Hurst case.

"Even though the jury unanimously recommended the death penalty, whether the 
jury unanimously found each aggravating factor remains unknown," Quince wrote.

(source: The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal)






MISSISSIPPI:

Mississippi and the death penalty: Firing squad is not the answer, abolition is


I would like to say I was surprised when I read the headline last week stating 
Mississippi was considering the firing squad as a method of execution, but I 
was not. Unfortunately, Mississippi is not the only state taking 2 giant leaps 
backward on the issue of capital punishment.

Since the sole provider of sodium thiopental - an anesthetic that is part of 
the cocktail used in lethal injections - stopped production in 2011, states 
have been scrambling to find other means of execution. As a result of this 
shortage, Mississippi has not had an execution since 2012, according to the 
Mississippi Department of Corrections.

HB 638, which passed the Mississippi House with 74 votes last week, would 
provide Mississippi with alternate forms of execution including the gas 
chamber, firing squad, and electric chair.

Additionally, the bill would prevent the names of any parties associated with 
the execution, including drug manufacturers, from being released to the public, 
because this could lead to ethical problems.

According to a Buzzfeed News report, in 2015, Texas attempted to purchase a 
lethal injection drug from a company in India. The state was, however, unable 
to do so before the Indian government raided the company, which was consisted 
of 5 20-year-old men, producing narcotics in a small apartment.

Other states, such as Nebraska, have also attempted to illegally purchase 
lethal injection drugs that were not approved by the FDA.

Most importantly, the bill represents a moral departure from global progress on 
the issue of the death penalty. Instead of searching for new methods of 
execution, Mississippi leaders should remove the death penalty altogether.

The United States is currently the only developed country that still executes 
its citizens.

According to Amnesty International, the United States ranked 5th for most 
executions for 2015, sitting quite cozily between Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

The United Nations voted in 2014 for a resolution calling for a moratorium on 
the death penalty, but the U.S. was one of only 38 countries who opposed it. 
Even beyond basic support of capital punishment, the United States has lagged 
behind other countries on more specific aspects of capital punishment.

It was not until the 2002 Supreme Court ruling in Atkins v. Virginia that 
executing an intellectually disabled individual was ruled unconstitutional, or 
until 2005 Roper v. Simmons that sentencing a juvenile was no longer permitted, 
taking the U.S. nearly three decades to comply with the International Covenant 
on Civil and Political Rights.

Mississippi's move towards expanding execution practices stands in stark 
contrast to the global trend on this issue.

If you are currently thinking that a global trend is not sufficient reason to 
alter domestic policy, then you are probably right. Which is why there are 
plenty of other reasons Mississippi and the United States should alter its 
position.

First of all, the death penalty is extremely costly. A 2011 study conducted by 
Federal Judge Arthur Alarcon and Loyala Law School Professor Paula Mitchell 
found that the death penalty had cost California taxpayers $4 billion dollars 
and by commuting those currently on death row to life without parole, the state 
would save approximately $5 billion over a 20 year period. This trend in costs 
holds true for other states as well.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), the majority of 
capital cases stem from only 2 percent of U.S. counties, which shifts the 
exorbitant cost of executions to the entire state. However, in some cases, the 
high cost means raising county taxes to foot the bill.

A Wall Street Journal article pointed out that in the 1990s Quitman County, 
Mississippi raised taxes three times, and then still took out a loan in order 
to pay for the capital trial of two men. When resources are spent on the death 
penalty, it detracts from other programs. Being a state with budget problems, 
Mississippi quite literally cannot afford this.

For how much we spend on the death penalty, it is severely ineffective at 
deterring crime.

In a 2009 survey of "former and present presidents of the country's top 
academic criminological societies, 88 percent of these experts rejected the 
notion that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder. Even though the 
South accounts for 80 % of executions, FBI reports still show the region has 
the highest murder rates."

Many death penalty advocates argue that if we speed up the appeals process and 
number of executions per year, the death penalty's general deterrence would be 
more effective and less costly. Or as author Edward Abbey puts it, "The death 
penalty would be even more effective, as a deterrent, if we executed a few 
innocent people more often."

DPIC reports that there have been 157 people exonerated from death row since 
1973 with the most recent occurring on January 19, 2017.

Mississippi accounts for 4 of these exonerations, with 1 being a Starkville man 
who was exonerated of 2 capital murder charges as recently as 2015. The risk of 
executing the innocent is simply too great. In addition, the system has proven 
to be racially biased.

A 1984 Stanford study found that the defendant's odds of receiving a death 
sentence were 5.5 times higher if the victim were white. The ACLU reports that 
blacks currently account for a disproportionate 55 % of those currently 
awaiting execution. By combining the global trend towards abolition with the 
cost, deterrence, rate of exonerations, and proven racial bias, it is 
compellingly clear why the United States and states such as Mississippi must 
also choose abolition.

Even when considering these facts, I am still often asked, "but what if it were 
you whose loved one was killed, wouldn't you want the death penalty then?"

Alexis Durham responds to this in the Northwestern Law Review by asking instead 
this: "Should society be content to accept retributivist emotions as worthy of 
normative preservation and codification in law simply because such feelings 
have been a regular part of human reactions?" The answer is no.

Ultimately, it is a luxury to view people through only the veil of their crimes 
- when they have a name and story, the issue becomes more complex.

I have sat in jail across the table from individuals who were facing a looming 
death sentence or execution. I saw this complexity first-hand because each time 
I sat there, I was consistently confronted by how blatantly human they were.

When MS legislators consider what this bill will cost us, I ask that they also 
consider what it will cost us morally, as a state. The question they must ask 
is not whether people deserve to die, but rather, whether we as a state deserve 
to kill. The answer again is no.

(source: Opinion, Holly Travis; The Reflector)






OHIO:

Prosecutors will seek death penalty in murder of Alianna Defreeze


More charges were filed against the man accused of killing 14-year-old Alianna 
Defreeze.

Christopher Whitaker, 44, was originally charged with aggravated murder. Now, 
he faces an indictment for rape, kidnapping, offenses against a human corpse, 
burglary and tampering with evidence.

The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office told FOX 8 News it will seek the death 
penalty in this case.

Defreeze was last seen on Jan. 26 getting off of an RTA bus at East 93rd Street 
and Kinsman Avenue. Her mother reported her missing when she learned Alianna 
was not at school. 3 days later, officers found her body in an abandoned house 
on Fuller Avenue.

On Saturday, hundreds of people gathered at Imani Temple Ministries in 
Cleveland Heights for her funeral.

Whitaker became a suspect through DNA evidence. U.S. Marshals arrested him 
without incident in Maple Heights. When he appeared in court on Feb. 4, 
Whitaker's bond was set at $3 million.

Authorities said he has an extensive criminal record, including charges of 
sexual battery and felonious assault. He is a registered sex offender in 
Cuyahoga County.

(source: Fox News)



KANSAS:

Kansas Lawmakers Consider End to Death Penalty


Kansas lawmakers are considering repealing the death penalty but a committee 
chairman is not sure whether the bill will pass.

The House Corrections and Juvenile Justice Committee heard testimony Monday. 
Rep. Russell Jennings, the committee chair, says he doesn't know the vote count 
for the proposal. The bill is brought by a group of 15 lawmakers.

Kansas is 1 of 31 states that allow the death penalty.

The bill's supporters argue that the death penalty is expensive because of the 
higher level of legal work needed in capital punishment cases. They also say 
people can end up on death row after being wrongly convicted. The Midwest 
Innocence Project says more than 150 people have been exonerated after being 
committed to death row.

No opponents testified Monday.

(source: Associated Press)






SOUTH DAKOTA:

Panel rejects eliminating death penalty for mentally ill offenders


A legislative panel on Monday defeated a bill that would have eliminated the 
option of the death sentence for severely mentally ill criminal offenders.

The House State Affairs Committee on a 8-4 vote opted to reject the bill after 
defense attorneys, mental health advocates and others advocated for its 
passage, saying severely mentally ill individuals shouldn't be subject to 
capital punishment.

The measure proposed instead setting a life sentence without opportunity for 
parole as the maximum penalty for criminal offenders found to have severe 
mental illnesses.

"You only execute morally culpable people and if you have a serious mental 
illness, you're not morally culpable," said the measure's sponsor Rep. Timothy 
Johns, R-Lead.

Attorney General Marty Jackley, state's attorneys from Minnehaha and Pennington 
Counties and others said the current process is adequate to assess offenders' 
mental health status and to eliminate the option of the death sentence for 
offenders who are found to have mental illnesses.

Aaron McGowan, Minnehaha County state's attorney, said very seldom do 
prosecutors seek the death penalty for offenders and those cases don't involve 
mentally ill individuals.

"We use it sparingly, we use it appropriately and we'd ask this committee to 
consider that these are evil defendants who have a hole in their brains where 
most of us have a conscience," he said.

Opponents also argued that the bill was an effort to eliminate capital 
punishment in South Dakota.

"HB 1099 is a death penalty repeal in all but name," Jackley said.

A handful of other states have considered and rejected similar measures.

(source: Argus Leader)






COLORADO:

Insights: Death penalty fight begins anew in Colorado Wednesday, but all's 
quiet on the front


There have been no rallies, no press conferences and little fanfare from either 
side about taking away the government's ability to kill somebody. Maybe it 
seems like brain damage to stare at a rock waiting for it to move. Colorado is 
a rock on this issue.

Senate Bill 95 has respected, capable sponsors - Senate Democratic leader Lucia 
Guzman, a pastor with a kind demeanor, and Rep. Alec Garnett, a former state 
party executive director and the son of Boulder County District Attorney Stan 
Garnett.

The death penalty was at Colorado's forefront just months ago. Arapahoe County 
District Attorney George Brauchler, an often-rumored candidate for governor, 
sought to enforce it on James Holmes, who killed 12 people and injured 70 
others when he opened fire in an Aurora movie theater in 2012.

Holmes got life in prison.

Technically, only 2 people sit on Colorado's death row. Sir Mario Owens and 
Robert Ray were co-conspirators in the 2005 execution of a witness who was 
going to testify in a murder case against Ray.

The 3rd Coloradan awaiting death is Nathan Dunlap. He was 19 years old in 1993 
when he hid in the restroom of the Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Aurora until 
after closing time. He robbed the place and killed 3 teenagers and a 
50-year-old woman who worked there.

Dunlap won't be executed as long as John Hickenlooper is governor, however. 
Hickenlooper said in 2013 he would not be the governor to decide Dunlap's fate, 
that Colorado should have a discussion first about where it stands on the death 
penalty.

4 years later, that conversation hasn't happened, and the bill is up for its 
1st, and possibly its last, hearing Wednesday afternoon.

The path to death row in Canon City is lined with political quicksand.

In 2013, Democrats sought to repeal the death penalty, but couldn't hold 
together enough members of their party to get the bill out of committee. One of 
those House Democrats who stood in the way was Lois Court. She is now in the 
state Senate, where there are 18 Republicans and 17 Democrats.

The bill isn't likely to survive the Senate Judiciary Committee, however. The 
deck is stacked on both sides.

The committee has 3 Republicans and 2 Democrats. The Republicans are chairman 
Bob Gardner, a tough-as-nails attorney from Colorado Springs; John Cooke, the 
former Weld County Sheriff; and Don Coram from Montrose, who represents a 
district of western Colorado where people are anything but soft on criminals. 
The Democratic side is challenging, too.

Committee member Rhonda Fields of Aurora supports the death penalty, for the 
most personal and ironclad of reasons. Death row inmates Owens and Ray killed 
her son, Javad Marshall-Fields and Marshall-Fields' fiancee, Vivian Wolfe, at 
an intersection. Arapahoe County juries sentenced them to death.

Even if Fields doesn't recuse herself for a conflict of interest, she's 
unlikely to support a repeal. She said in 2013 that voters should decide 
whether Colorado remains one of the 31 states with a death penalty.

The 5th member of the Senate Judiciary Committee is Daniel Kagan, who 
represents part of Arapahoe County. The death penalty runs through Arapahoe 
County.

Dunlap, Owens and Ray were sentenced to death in Arapahoe County. In December, 
Brauchler said he would seek the death penalty against a fourth man, Brandon 
Jamal Johnson. The 27-year-old's lawyers have said he's willing to plead to a 
charge that spares his life for killing his 6-year-old son. Brauchler has said 
"no dice."

Brauchler is one of the top names mentioned as a Republican candidate for 
governor next year. Last year he convicted James Holmes in the 2012 mass 
shooting in the Aurora movie theater. He could not get the death penalty from 
an Arapahoe County jury, however.

Brauchler won another term last year with no opposition in the primary or 
general election.

Though Hickenlooper didn't support a repeal effort in 2013, his Dunlap decision 
was still an albatross around his 2014 re-election campaign. That summer a 
Quinnipiac University poll indicated nearly 7 in 10 Coloradans favor the death 
penalty.

Wednesday, advocates will make the case that if a jury, such as the one trying 
Holmes, isn't willing to hand down the penalty and some governors aren't 
willing to enforce it, then why should taxpayers continually foot millions of 
dollars in legal bills in each case. A person who gets death gets decades of 
access to the courts at taxpayers' expense.

They also will point to statistics that show the possibility of death as a 
punishment doesn't deter violent crime, but only serves as society's vengeance.

States with the death penalty had murder rates 25 % to 46 % higher than states 
without it, Kathleen Hynes, a volunteer with the ACLU of Colorado, wrote in an 
op-ed in the Colorado Springs Gazette last August.

"We know capital punishment does not save the state money and resources, is not 
a deterrent and we don't know how many innocent people we have killed or will 
kill in the future," she said. "So, let's do away with this law."

In closely divided legislative districts, however, officeholders have to think 
how their vote, no matter how nuanced, sounds in an opponent's campaign 
attacks.

No one in the state Capitol is talking much about this bill, because anything 
they say can and will be held against them in the court of public opinion.

(source: Colorado Springs Gazette)

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

Colorado Death-Penalty Expert Michael Radelet on Latest Push to Ban Executions


On Wednesday, February 15, the Colorado Legislature's Senate Judiciary 
Committee will turn its attention to Senate Bill 95, a bill seeking to ban the 
death penalty in the state, sponsored by 2 Democrats, Senator Lucia Guzman and 
Representative Alec Garnett. One of those scheduled to speak in support of the 
bill is Michael Radelet, a CU sociology professor who's spent much of the past 
35 years studying the debates, missteps, and declining use of capital 
punishment at home and around the globe.

Radelet's new book, The History of the Death Penalty in Colorado (University 
Press of Colorado), hits bookstores just in time to give lawmakers a 
comprehensive look at the 103 executions that have taken place here since 1859, 
as well as a compilation of dozens of other cases in which men were sentenced 
to death but never executed. It discusses botched hangings (like that of Eddie 
Ives), our short-lived experiment with using three-judge panels to impose 
death, the increasingly cumbersome legal machinery of death appeals, and what 
Radelet describes as Colorado's "ambivalence" about the death penalty, embodied 
in such disparate events as a jury's refusal to sentence Aurora theater shooter 
James Holmes to death and Governor John Hickenlooper's controversial "reprieve" 
for Nathan Dunlap.

The state has actually imposed the ultimate penalty only twice in the past 
half-century - most recently a full 20 years ago, when rapist/murderer Gary 
Davis was executed by lethal injection. But efforts to put the state's 
seldom-used death penalty out of its misery in recent years have consistently 
met strong opposition from district attorneys and the state's powerful victims 
lobby. Will this year be any different? We decided some historical perspective 
from Radelet might help give us some idea. Here's our recent conversation:

Westword: Senate Bill 95 refers to the death penalty in Colorado as a "failed 
policy." Would you agree with that?

Michael Radelet: Those are Lucia Guzman's words, and she's been a foe of the 
death penalty ever since she was a little girl. A failed policy? There are some 
things it does real well; it allows politicians to create the false impression 
that they???re actually doing something about crime. It allows them to look 
tough. In terms of political advantage, it's not a failure. But as a 
criminal-justice policy, by any measure, it certainly is.

We've been close to abolition before - and actually have had periods when 
executions were banned in Colorado. Is the political climate right now to 
eliminate all future executions?

We abolished the death penalty once - in 1897. We brought it back in 1901 to 
deter lynchings, not homicides. In 2009 the legislature came within one vote of 
abolishing it again. Whether Governor Bill Ritter would have signed that 
legislation is unknown; he played his cards very close to the vest. This year, 
this hearing on Wednesday is in the Senate Judiciary Committee. I think the 
chances are very slim because of the makeup of that committee. As far as I 
know, no Republican has signed onto the bill - not even the Catholic 
Republicans. And what Governor Hickenlooper does is another question.

What's your view on the arguments about racism in the prosecutors' discretion 
over who gets prosecuted as a capital case? All 3 of our current death-row 
residents are, as you know, African American men who went to the same high 
school.

If you look to cases in which they sought death since 1980, the argument shifts 
around - to the race of the victim. There are very few cases where death is 
sought for killing people of color. In the last 10 years or so, there have been 
some pretty horrific homicides with multiple Hispanic victims, where the death 
penalty was not sought.

What does the history of the death penalty in Colorado teach us about how this 
state has dealt with the legal and moral issues of execution, compared to other 
Western states?

In Colorado, we've never really been gung-ho about it, like Texas. But in other 
Western states, there has also been ambivalence about the death penalty. New 
Mexico abolished it. Nebraska abolished it for a while; they talked about 
fiscal responsibility, small government and religious values. Then the 
governor, Pete Ricketts, vetoed the bill. The legislature overrode the veto. 
And then Ricketts - his family is loaded, and the family donated several 
hundred thousand dollars to a ballot initiative, and the death penalty was 
restored.

But even the most conservative states have ambivalence about it. The trend 
nationally for the last 15 years has been a trend away from the death penalty, 
on several different fronts. Public support for the death penalty is dropping; 
the most recent poll shows that more people support life without parole. There 
have been fewer people sentenced to death, fewer executions, more religious 
leaders speaking out. And more states abolishing the death penalty: New York, 
New Jersey, New Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware. And you've 
got moratoria, led by other governors following Governor Hickenlooper's lead, 
in Oregon, Washington and Pennsylvania. Clearly, something is going on. Around 
the world, the trend is all in one direction over the past 40 years; we're just 
looking for the final nail in the executioner's coffin, so to speak. But how 
Colorado gets there is still up in the air.

Do you think state leaders have had the "intense conversation" about the death 
penalty that Hickenlooper hoped they would have when he granted a temporary 
reprieve to Nathan Dunlap?

I don't know about state leaders, but more and more people are talking about 
it. Students are talking about it, churches are talking about it. But it's not 
a top-ten issue in Colorado. It???s not really front and center. If 
Hickenlooper ends up commuting the sentences of the 3 men now on death row, 
then we're at least 20 years out to the next possible execution. Maybe more 
than that. Meanwhile, it's a good time to be an attorney.

In your book, you write that the conversation has shifted from who should die 
to who should kill, that we're making "godlike decisions without godlike 
skills." Are there particular instances of that in Colorado that come to mind?

We can start with Joe Arridy. [Arridy, a man with an IQ of 46 who was executed 
in 1939 after a highly dubious "confession" of involvement in a rape and murder 
in Pueblo, received a posthumous pardon from Ritter in 2011.] There have also 
been prosecutions in Colorado where the guy ended up acquitted. Right now the 
death penalty seems to be reserved not only for people of color from Arapahoe 
County, but they also seem to [want to use it] with the mentally ill - James 
Holmes, and they still haven't announced if they're going to seek death for 
Robert Dear. That???s what I mean by godlike decisions: There are many cases 
where the circumstances are highly aggravated, yet the death penalty is not 
pursued.

When you address these senators about this bill, what do you think is the most 
important thing to get across?

I think if we look at this on a basis of empirical facts and research, there's 
no question they'll vote to abolish. On the issue of cost, of inequities, of 
deterrence, and helping the families of homicide victims - those are all 
abolitionist arguments now. But if you look at it on the basis of emotion, then 
[the bill] won't pass. The knee-jerk reaction is pro-death, but the more people 
know about the death penalty, the more likely they are to oppose it.

(source: Alan Prendergast has been a staff writer for Westword since 1995 and 
teaches journalism at Colorado College----Westword)






USA:

Surviving Death Row


A group of exonerated death row survivors called the 'Resurrection Club' fights 
to abolish the death penalty in the US.

Fast facts

--On July 1, 2016 there were 2,905 people on death row in the US

--1,446 people have been executed since 1976, 540 of them in Texas

--157 people sentenced to death have been exonerated since 1973

[source: Death Penalty Information Centre]

----

After spending years on death row in American jails, Ron Keine, Shujaa Graham, 
Greg Wilhoit and Albert Burrell were reborn the day they were declared innocent 
and released.

This is the story of 4 friends who, after enduring years of mental suffering 
and isolation from society, became activists and are campaigning to end the 
death penalty.

Still suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression after being 
incarcerated for so long despite their innocence, they joined the association 
of death row exonerees, Witness to Innocence. Calling themselves the 
"Resurrection Club", they travel from state to state, supported by their wives 
and children, to lobby for an end to the death penalty.

More than 150 death row survivors have been found innocent and exonerated in 
the US and many have joined Witness to Innocence. This is a story of friendship 
and love, a trip through the US - from Texas to Washington DC - to end an 
inhuman and unjust criminal justice system.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FILMMAKERS' VIEW----By Guillermo Abril and Alvaro Corcuera


In November 2009, we first heard about the 100-plus people in the United States 
who were once sentenced to death for a crime they didn't commit.

Juan Melendez, a man from Puerto Rico who spent 18 years on death row in 
Florida, showed us a documentary about his life in Madrid. He talked to us 
about Witness to Innocence, the only organisation in the US which brings 
together death row exonerees and their relatives, and told us they were going 
to meet soon.

Soon after, 21 survivors gathered in Birmingham, Alabama. One of us travelled 
there to write an article for El Pais Semanal, the magazine we work for in 
Spain. We decided we needed to attend another Witness to Innocence meeting, 
this time with a camera. That's how the idea for "Surviving Death Row" was 
born.

We didn't have any experience in making documentaries - we were print 
journalists. The first step was building a team. We brought in Luis Almodovar, 
a colleague at El Pais, as director of photography for the film.

Using our own money in the beginning, we were motivated by our passion. We 
travelled with cameras for the 1st time to Richmond, Virginia, in 2011, to a 
similar gathering to the one that had happened in Alabama a year and a half 
earlier. This was the 1st of 5 trips in the years to come.

Capital punishment is still legal in 31 US states and 2,905 people were on 
death row as of July 1, 2016. Last year, 20 executions took place in the US. 
Texas has executed the most convicts since the death penalty was reinstated in 
the US in 1976: about 1/3 of the nearly 1,500 people dead as a result of 
capital punishment.

In the summer of 2011, we made a 2-week road trip through Texas. The exonerees 
spoke at universities, schools, churches, radios and community centres, trying 
to turn around widespread public opinion in favour of the death penalty in the 
region. Greg, Albert, Ron and Shujaa were 4 of those exonerees, travelling 
together in a van. They would become the main characters in our film.

We were deeply affected by our visit to Albert's home, a run-down trailer on 
his sister's ranch. Albert had spent 13 years on death row and we discovered he 
had a small mental disability. He showed us his horses and we accompanied him 
to his various jobs, which included working as a junk seller.

On later trips, we travelled to Oklahoma, Missouri, Mississippi, Detroit and 
Washington DC and visited more exonerees in their homes.

Greg told us how he had been forced to give up his daughter for adoption when 
he was wrongfully sentenced to death for killing his wife. Ron showed us the 
ruins of the American dream in downtown Detroit where he grew up as a kid and 
where he still rides his Harley. Shujaa invited us to his family's house on 
Father's Day where he shared a meal of Southern-style crabs with his wife, sons 
and grandsons. His wife talked to us about the day she met him in prison. She 
was a white nurse. He was a "dangerous" African-American inmate, according to 
the authorities. They have been together since he was freed in 1981.

Watching the exonerees when they got together was a moving experience. They had 
long, deep conversations. Besides being friends, they were "pain mates", as we 
called them: people who shared the experience of surviving a miserable place. 
Only after they left prison had they realised that there were others like them, 
who understood what they had gone through. When they met, they did not have to 
justify anything. Nobody judged them or asked them questions. They just laughed 
and enjoyed their freedom together.

(source: Al Jazeera)