Two Death-Row Prisoners with Innocence Claims Die on Death Row, Two Days Apart.

Two death-row pris­on­ers who have long assert­ed their inno­cence, one in North Carolina and the oth­er in Alabama, have died of can­cer on their state’s death rows.

Carl Moseley, who was diag­nosed with stage 4 stom­ach can­cer in June 2021, died on February 17, 2022, after spend­ing 30 years on death row in North Carolina for the mur­ders of two women last seen at a Forsythe County dance club and bar. He was 56 years old. Earlier in the day, his lawyer, Christine Mumma of the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence, the state attor­ney general’s office, and local pros­e­cu­tors had filed a con­sent order for DNA test­ing in his case. Mumma said she would press for posthu­mous tes­ti­mo­ny to ful­fill Moseley’s wish to clear his name.

On February 19, 2022, William Kuenzel (pic­tured, left, with his appeal lawyer, David Kochman) died on Alabama’s death row after what his legal team described as ​“a long bat­tle with can­cer.” He was 60 years old. Kuenzel spent 34 years on death row after being sen­tenced to death in 1988 for the mur­der of a store clerk in a tri­al that last­ed only 14 hours. The evi­dence pre­sent­ed against him con­sist­ed of tes­ti­mo­ny by a co-work­er, Harvey Venn, who impli­cat­ed Kuenzel only after being arrest­ed for the mur­der him­self, and a teenage eye­wit­ness who claimed to have seen Kuenzel and Venn in the store that night. The only phys­i­cal evi­dence of the crime was blood found on Venn’s pants.

Kuenzel had a cor­rob­o­rat­ed ali­bi that put him 25 miles away from the store at the time of the mur­der with no access to a car. His court-appoint­ed coun­sel con­duct­ed min­i­mal fac­tu­al inves­ti­ga­tion in the case. The pros­e­cu­tion with­held from the defense evi­dence that Venn had the same type of gun that was used in the mur­der and had bruis­es con­sis­tent with dam­age done to the victim’s body; that the teenage eye­wit­ness had told the grand jury in the case that she could not iden­ti­fy the men in the store that night; that Venn’s 13-year-old girl­friend told the police and the grand jury that she saw Venn that night and that he was alone; and that when Venn was first arrest­ed, he said that he was with a dif­fer­ent per­son the night of the mur­der, gave a descrip­tion of the man and his name and address, but the police nev­er tried to find the man. No court ever reviewed the evi­dence of Kuenzel’s inno­cence because his lawyers missed a fil­ing dead­line by five months.