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On Fifteenth Anniversary of Witness to Innocence, Prominent Exonerees Seek Abolition of the Death Penalty

By Death Penalty Information Center

Posted on Nov 15, 2018 | Updated on Sep 25, 2024

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.

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