Innocence groups from around the coun­try, along with a group of eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny experts, recent­ly filed ami­cus briefs ask­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case of Kevin Keith, an Ohio man who is on death row for fatal­ly shoot­ing three peo­ple in 1994. The inno­cence groups stat­ed that Keith’s con­vic­tion was based on faulty eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny that was improp­er­ly influ­enced by the police. In addi­tion, Keith’s coun­sel uncov­ered anoth­er pos­si­ble sus­pect, a man with a vio­lent crim­i­nal his­to­ry, who told a con­fi­den­tial police infor­mant that he was paid to ​“crip­ple” the per­son who was the tar­get of the shoot­ing. Defense lawyers assert­ed that the state with­held impor­tant infor­ma­tion about the pos­si­ble oth­er sus­pect. Keith has an ali­bi for the time of the crime sup­port­ed by four wit­ness­es. No foren­sic evi­dence con­clu­sive­ly links him to the crime. Keith is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on September 15.

Updated (on June 22): For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www​.kevinkei​th​.org.

(A. Welsh-Huggins, ​“Innocence groups back con­demned Ohio killer of 3,” Associated Press, April 6, 2010). See also Innocence.

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