As vot­ers get set to cast bal­lots on death penal­ty ques­tions in California, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, U.S. death row exonerees from across the coun­try have been scour­ing those states in an effort to inform the pub­lic of the risks of wrong­ful exe­cu­tions. On September 19, 17 of the nation’s 156 death-row exonerees appeared at a California press con­fer­ence advo­cat­ing approval of Proposition 62, which would replace the death penal­ty with life with­out parole plus resti­tu­tion, and defeat of Proposition 66, which seeks to place lim­its on the cap­i­tal appeals process. Many, includ­ing California exoneree Shujaa Graham (pic­tured), Florida exoneree Juan Melendez, Arizona exonerees Ray Krone and Debra Milke, and Louisiana exoneree Damon Thibodeaux urged a no vote on Prop. 66, argu­ing that they would have been exe­cut­ed with­out the chance to prove their inno­cence if a mea­sure like it had been effect when they were sen­tenced to death. A few days ear­li­er, Illinois exoneree Randy Steidl and Ohio exoneree Kwame Ajamu spoke to the Oklahoma Republican Liberty Caucus, a group described by its chair­man, Logan County Commissioner Marven Goodman, as ​“dis­en­fran­chised con­ser­v­a­tives” who, as a result of their dis­trust of gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion are ques­tion­ing the death penal­ty. Steidl and Ajamu told the cau­cus about their wrong­ful cap­i­tal con­vic­tions and raised con­cerns about the effects of lim­i­ta­tions on judi­cial review under Oklahoma bal­lot ques­tion 776, which would bar Oklahoma courts from rul­ing that the impo­si­tion of the death penal­ty con­sti­tut­ed cru­el or unusu­al pun­ish­ment or ​“contravene[d] any pro­vi­sion of the Oklahoma Constitution.” Steidl, who was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed in Illinois in 1987 and exon­er­at­ed in 2004, stressed the impor­tance of appel­late review in secur­ing his exon­er­a­tion: ​“Without the judi­cial review I final­ly got, I’d be dead today or at least be lan­guish­ing in prison,” he said. ​“I real­ly believe that Oklahoma’s track record so far is not very pret­ty when you’ve got 10 peo­ple that’s been exon­er­at­ed.” And in Nebraska, Maryland​’s Kirk Bloodsworth, the first for­mer death row pris­on­er to be exon­er­at­ed by DNA, taped an ad on behalf of Retain A Just Nebraska, the advo­ca­cy com­mit­tee oppos­ing a vot­er ref­er­en­dum that could over­turn the state leg­is­la­ture’s repeal of Nebraska’s death penal­ty. In the ad, Bloodsworth says: ​“You could free a man from prison, but you can­not free him from the grave. You can not un-exe­cute some­one. … If it can hap­pen to an hon­or­ably dis­charged marine with no crim­i­nal record or crim­i­nal his­to­ry, it could hap­pen to any­body in America.”

(J. White, ​“Capitol Alert: Exoneration Nation,” Sacramento Bee, September 19, 2016; J. Coburn, ​“Oklahoma con­ser­v­a­tive group exam­ines death penal­ty,” Edmond Sun, September 16, 2016; C. Tolan, ​“This for­mer death row inmate has a pow­er­ful mes­sage for Nebraskans vot­ing on the death penal­ty,” Fusion, July 12, 2016) See New Voices and Oklahoma. You can see the Facebook livestream of the California press con­fer­ence fea­tur­ing 17 death-row exonerees here.

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