A group of death row exonerees, includ­ing Kwame Ajamu (pic­tured), held a press con­fer­ence in Cleveland on October 9 in which they called for the end of the death penal­ty. Ajamu — the nation’s 150th death-row exoneree — was freed from Ohio​’s death row in 2014 along with his broth­er, Wiley Bridgeman, and anoth­er man, Ricky Jackson. The three had been con­vict­ed 39 years ear­li­er on the tes­ti­mo­ny of a 12-year-old boy who lat­er recant­ed, say­ing he had been pres­sured by police. ​“We hope that we can end this atroc­i­ty today. We hope that tomor­row’s news­pa­pers would say that there’s no more death penal­ty.… If there’s any­thing that I would beg for this coun­try, for this world to lis­ten to is the heart­felt cries and pleas of myself and fel­low com­rades who have been exon­er­at­ed from death,” Ajamu said. He was one of about 20 exonerees who appeared at the event, which was orga­nized by Witness to Innocence, a nation­al orga­ni­za­tion of death row exonerees. State Representative Nickie Antonio, who has intro­duced a bill to abol­ish the death penal­ty, said, ​“The best reform is to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and replace it with a sen­tence of life with­out parole. It is time to exe­cute jus­tice, not to execute people.”

(B. Blackwell, ​“Death row exonerees come to Cleveland to pro­mote abol­ish­ing exe­cu­tions,” Northwest Ohio Media Group, October 9, 2015.) See Innocence and Recent Legislation.

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