As Witness to Innocence (WTI), an organization of U.S. death-row exonerees and their families, prepared to mark its 15th anniversary on November 15, 2018, two of the country’s most prominent exonerees—WTI’s acting director, Kirk Bloodsworth (pictured, left), and its board chair, Kwame Ajamu (pictured, right)—called for an end to the death penalty in the United States. In an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the two exonerees told the stories of their wrongful convictions and death sentences and highlighted the problem of wrongful capital convictions across the U.S.
After having spent eight years in prison in Maryland, Bloodsworth became the first capitally-convicted person in the world to be exonerated by DNA evidence. Prosecutors had withheld exculpatory evidence in his case and police had used unreliable interrogation techniques and a commercial “identi-kit” in getting two young boys to misidentify Bloodsworth as the person who raped and murdered a young girl. Kwame Ajamu spent 28 years in prison in Ohio, including three on death row, because police coerced a 13-year-old boy to falsely identify him, his brother, and one of their friends. It took 39 years before he was finally exonerated.
Ajamu’s and Bloodsworth’s op-ed also draws attention to the stories of the other 162 wrongfully convicted and death-sentenced men and women who have been exonerated in the U.S. since 1973. “Based on the empirical data and our own life experiences, we believe it is time to end capital punishment across the U.S.,” they write. “Some people support capital punishment in theory, but in practice, it is too broken to be fixed. We need to get the death penalty right every time, and we don’t. If it can happen to us, it can happen to anyone.”
In connection with the anniversary, WTI also live-streamed a news conference themed From Death Row to Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Justice. The event featured more than twenty death-row exonerees, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck, death-penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean, DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham, and others. In conjunction with the anniversary. WTI also announced the launching of a new project, Accuracy & Justice Workshops, which are intended to bring exonerees and criminal justice professionals together to work on reducing wrongful convictions. As part of that project, WTI will be conducting a series of training workshops with prosecutors from the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office in December.
(Kwame Ajamu and Kirk Bloodsworth, For death row survivors, the fight against capital punishment starts in Philly | Opinion, Philadelphia Inquirer, November 13, 2018.) See Innocence.
Innocence
Mar 01, 2024
