New Podcast: Carine Williams of the Innocence Project Discusses the Death Penalty, Innocence, and ​‘the Function of Freedom’

In the March 2021 edi­tion of Discussions with DPIC, Death Penalty Information Center Senior Director of Research and Special Projects Ngozi Ndulue is joined by Carine Williams — the Chief Program Strategy Officer at the Innocence Project — for a con­ver­sa­tion about inno­cence, the death penal­ty, and ​“the func­tion of free­dom.” Reflecting on the gross mis­car­riage of jus­tice exhib­it­ed in wrong­ful con­vic­tions and exon­er­a­tions, Williams stress­es two crit­i­cal themes: death is irrev­o­ca­ble and end­ing the death penal­ty is sim­ply not enough.

In a wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion, Ndulue and Williams first dis­cuss the case of Albert Woodfox, one of Williams’ for­mer clients who just marked his five-year anniver­sary of exon­er­a­tion after spend­ing almost 44 years in retal­ia­to­ry soli­tary con­fine­ment in Louisiana’s noto­ri­ous Angola prison. Woodfox was one of the ​“Angola 3,” three Black men at the prison who were false­ly accused of mur­der­ing a white prison guard. Woodfox was sen­tenced to life in prison in 1973 because the death penal­ty was unavail­able at the time as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Furman v. Georgia. His decades of 23-hour-a-day soli­tary con­fine­ment were ​“not for any legit­i­mate secu­ri­ty con­cern,” Williams explained. ​“It was pure pun­ish­ment — pun­ish­ment that wasn’t met­ed out by a judge but by these prison offi­cials, who had lived with and worked with the cor­rec­tions offi­cer who had been killed.”

Williams and Ndulue also dis­cuss the per­va­sive and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry effect of race on every aspect of the crim­i­nal legal sys­tem. ​“There’s no way to dis­ag­gre­gate this country’s his­to­ry with chat­tel slav­ery and racism from any facet of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem,” said Williams. ​“Slavery was abol­ished in this coun­try in 1865. And the coun­try turned to crim­i­nal jus­tice as a means of racial con­trol.” Williams notes that the prison where Woodfox was locat­ed is on the land where a plan­ta­tion once stood. ​“It just seems like the con­ti­nu­ity between those moments are — we’re still talk­ing about the place where death row is — where we’re still talk­ing about the place where peo­ple are spend­ing their entire lives,” Ndulue said. ​“It is real­ly crys­tal clear that we are still doing some of the same things and that the legal sys­tem is still engag­ing in some of the same work that has been part of that work of sup­port­ing racial hier­ar­chies for our entire nation’s history here.”

Ndulue and Williams also explain that exon­er­a­tions involv­ing DNA evi­dence show the injus­tices and sys­temic fail­ures of the sys­tem in the far greater num­ber of cas­es in which DNA evi­dence is unavail­able or DNA test­ing has been denied. “[T]he DNA cas­es tell us not just about what we see in that one exon­er­a­tion, but what we are not see­ing, right?” Williams explained. ​“Like if you’ve ever lived in a house with roach­es … you know that when you walk into the kitchen at night and you flip the light switch on, if you see one or two roach­es scur­ry­ing away, you know with­out ques­tion that you have a whole lot more than one or two …. [T]hat’s the way it is with these DNA exon­er­a­tions. They — the light — is just telling us what’s real­ly hid­den behind this fiction.” 

They also dis­cuss the work and advo­ca­cy by exonerees, many of whom con­tin­ue to fight for jus­tice for oth­ers once they have been exon­er­at­ed. ​“It nev­er ceas­es to amaze me how often and how ardent­ly peo­ple who have lost already so much of their lives to the gross mis­car­riage of jus­tice that is wrong­ful con­vic­tion and who get out and who opt to use what­ev­er time they have left here, right on Earth, they opt to use that time to work on pre­vent­ing injus­tice from hap­pen­ing to oth­ers,” said Williams. ​“I mean, just see it hap­pen over and over again. Exonerees are out in front of every sin­gle crim­i­nal jus­tice reform issue out there, includ­ing abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty, right? … [T]hat’s why I love my job. Like that piece of it is what makes me excit­ed to get to work on Monday.” 

“You know, I always talk about the Toni Morrison quote that ​‘the func­tion of free­dom is to free some­body else.’ And our clients live that. And they remind me to live that,” said Williams. ​“And I hope that what I do in the world [is] remind the peo­ple around me to also live that.”