Exoneree Ryan Matthews Calls for Ending Louisiana’s Death Penalty: ​“I Know Capital Punishment Doesn’t Work”

DNA exon­er­at­ed Ryan Matthews in 2004, after he had spent five years on death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola for a mur­der he did not com­mit. In December 2019, he received his col­lege degree. ​“I’m so used to obsta­cles get­ting in my way,” Matthews, told Nola​.com. ​“But that won’t stop me. When one door shuts, I work to get anoth­er one to open.”

In a February 6, 2020 op-ed in The Advocate in which he describes his time on death row, Matthews lends his voice to open­ing doors for oth­ers as well. ​“Louisiana has one of the high­est rates of wrong­ful con­vic­tion and of wrong­ly sen­tenc­ing peo­ple to death in the coun­try,” he writes. ​“We’ve exon­er­at­ed more men from death row than we’ve exe­cut­ed in the last 20 years. Some peo­ple say that means our jus­tice sys­tem works. It does not. I was only exon­er­at­ed by the grace of God and my ded­i­cat­ed legal team. I guar­an­tee there are still inno­cent men on death row who have not had my good luck.”

“I know cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment doesn’t work,” Matthews says. ​“it’s high time we end the death penal­ty in Louisiana.”

Shortly after his 17^th birth­day, Matthews was arrest­ed for the mur­der of a local con­ve­nience store own­er by a masked young man. Witnesses described the mur­der­er as short — no taller than 5’8”. Three wit­ness­es inter­viewed by police were unable to defin­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fy Matthews, who is at least 6 feet tall, as the perpetrator. 

But Matthews’ court-appoint­ed lawyer was ill pre­pared and unable to han­dle incon­sis­ten­cies in the state’s case, state­ments by a coop­er­at­ing co-defen­dant that impli­cat­ed Matthews but were con­tra­dict­ed by the phys­i­cal evi­dence, and the DNA evi­dence in the case. He ​“did noth­ing for me, and did not inves­ti­gate my case,” Matthews says. 

On the third day of the tri­al, the judge ordered clos­ing argu­ments, and sent the jury to delib­er­ate. When they could not agree on a ver­dict after sev­er­al hours, the court ordered them to con­tin­ue delib­er­a­tions until they did. Less than an hour lat­er, the ver­dict was in: they found Matthews guilty and, after a short penal­ty phase, sen­tenced him to death two days later.

When Matthews arrived on death row, he was sur­prised by the show of human­i­ty that greet­ed him. The oth­er death-row pris­on­ers had heard he was com­ing and ​“took up a col­lec­tion for a wel­come bag, with can­dy, snacks, soap, a tooth­brush, tooth­paste, and oth­er hygiene items,” he writes. ​“It was a small ges­ture, but one that meant a lot. They did­n’t have much to offer, but they gave it freely, and I learned to pay it for­ward and con­tribute to the next guy.” 

Matthews also describes the emo­tion­al­ly debil­i­tat­ing con­di­tions on death row. ​“We were in soli­tary con­fine­ment, 23-hour lock­down each day,” he writes. ​“We had one hour to show­er, use the phone, or walk the hall to talk to the oth­er men in their cells.” Two men on his death-row tier with whom he became friends were exe­cut­ed. ​“I will nev­er for­get the somber feel­ing that came over all of us in the days lead­ing up to an exe­cu­tion,” he said.

Matthews cred­its his ​“crazy hard-work­ing low-paid” post-con­vic­tion defense team for relent­less­ly pur­su­ing the evi­dence that secured his release. Without them, he says, ​“I would nev­er have been freed. I would have been exe­cut­ed. Or I would still be sit­ting on death row.”

In March 2003, Matthews’ defense team won a motion to have the phys­i­cal evi­dence re-test­ed, obtain­ing sev­en DNA pro­files from the mask, shirt, and glove worn by the gun­man. The results exclud­ed Matthews, and point­ed direct­ly to anoth­er man who was serv­ing time for a mur­der com­mit­ted a few months after the con­ve­nience store killing and only blocks away. In April 2004, based on the DNA results and excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence that the pros­e­cu­tion had sup­pressed at tri­al, the court over­turned Matthews’ con­vic­tion and grant­ed him bail. He was offi­cial­ly exon­er­at­ed on August 9, 2004 when pros­e­cu­tors con­ced­ed that charges should nev­er have been brought against him, dropped all of the charges against him, and declared that his exon­er­a­tion was ​“in the inter­est of justice.” 

Matthews was the 14^th death row inmate freed with the help of DNA test­ing.

“The tor­ture I went through … was like some­thing from a hor­ror movie. It still haunts me at times. Nobody could go through that and say that the death penal­ty is a good idea or that our jus­tice sys­tem works. It is a hell I will be try­ing to recov­er from every remain­ing day I live on this earth,” Matthews says in his op-ed. ​“We should spend the hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars we cur­rent­ly spend try­ing to exe­cute defen­dants on pro­duc­tive things like edu­ca­tion, crime pre­ven­tion, and victim support.”