COMMENTARY: "Wrongful Convictions Like Mine Are Why It’s Time To End The Death Penalty," by Ray Krone, published by The Huffington Post on November 9, 2017. (Death row exoneree, co-founder of Witness to Innocence).
GIST: "With another Arizona death row inmate taking his case to the Supreme Court, justices ought to keep people like me in mind."
GIST: "I have played Dungeons & Dragons with guys on death row. I got new teeth thanks to the TV show “Extreme Makeover” and now have a Hollywood smile. I am a lifelong Republican and veteran of the U.S. Air Force. All three are true, no lies. I
spent more than 10 years in Arizona prisons for a crime I didn’t
commit, including almost three years on death row. In 1992, I was
convicted of killing a waitress in a Phoenix bar where I sometimes
played darts. Because
of a car accident in childhood, I had crooked front teeth. The police
interrogated me and asked me to bite into a piece of Styrofoam. At my
trial and re-trial, a so-called expert said that my teeth marks on the
Styrofoam matched teeth marks on the victim’s body. The
police decided I did it and built a case against me. No one bothered to
test the blood that the real killer left on the victim’s underwear. The
crime lab didn’t test the hairs found on her body. Fingerprints from
the crime scene weren’t sent to the national database for a match. It
wasn’t until 2002 that DNA testing ― which Arizona prosecutors opposed ―
showed that I couldn’t have committed the crime and identified Kenneth
Phillips, who is now serving a prison sentence for his crime. Arizona
is back in the spotlight because a man on death row named Abel Hidalgo
has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the state’s death
penalty statute and abolish capital punishment nationwide. Before all
this happened to me, I supported the death penalty. “An eye for an eye, a
tooth for a tooth” sounds good, unless they are talking about you and
you were home asleep at the time of the murder. The death penalty is supposed to be applied to the
worst offenders, but it’s more often applied to the defendants with the
worst lawyers.” Now I join the chorus of voices, including a growing number of conservatives,
who say it’s time to end the death penalty in every state. We have been
unable to create a system that is applied fairly, reserves the
punishment for the most serious crimes and doesn’t make terrible
mistakes. The death penalty is supposed to be applied to the worst
offenders, but it’s more often applied to the defendants with the worst
lawyers. Mr.
Hidalgo was convicted in Maricopa County, which uses the death penalty
more than any other county in Arizona. That means whether you get the
death penalty is an accident of where the crime occurred, not
necessarily the facts of the case or the nature of the offender. And all
too often, the race of the defendant and the victim drives who gets the
death penalty. One study showed that white jurors were more likely to recommend a death sentence for Latinos than for white defendants. The
court should look at where we are as a country, find that a national
consensus has emerged against the death penalty and rule it
unconstitutional, once and for all. Thirty-one states have formally
abandoned capital punishment. That figure includes 19 states that have
ended it all together, four states that have put the death penalty on
hold, and eight others that haven’t had an execution in the past 10
years. All
the numbers point toward the death penalty’s demise. Last year, juries
imposed 31 death sentences, the fewest since the Supreme Court declared
then-existing death penalty statutes unconstitutional in 1972. The 20
executions in 2016 marked the lowest number in a quarter century,
according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Also last year,
national public opinion polls showed support for capital punishment at a
40-year low. I
wish I could say my story is unusual. But the truth is, 160 men and
women have been exonerated and freed from death row since 1973. I often
wonder how the police and prosecutors that railroad innocent people onto
the gurney sleep at night. In an op-ed,
Marty Stroud, a former prosecutor in Louisiana who caused an innocent
man, Glenn Ford, to serve 30 years on death row before being exonerated
and released, explained: “In 1984, I was 33 years old. I was arrogant,
judgmental, narcissistic and very full of myself. I was not as
interested in justice as I was in winning.” Mr. Stroud is unusual for
his honesty, but not for his tactics. A
TV show was able to fix my teeth, but no one has been able to remove
mistakes and unfairness from our death penalty system. A sentence of
life without parole, which is available in essentially every state,
keeps the public safe while affirming our basic humanity. The U.S.
Supreme Court should take Hidalgo v. Arizona and end the death penalty in Arizona and everywhere else."
The entire commentary can be found at:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/arizona-wrongly-sentenced-me-to-death-and-my-exoneration-proves-the-death-penalty-is-flawed_us_5a0487dee4b0937b51104054
See National Registry of Exoneration entry at the link below: "On the morning of December 29, 1991, the body of 36-year-old Kim Ancona was found, nude, in the men’s restroom of the Phoenix, Arizona bar where she worked.Ancona had been fatally stabbed, and the perpetrator left behind little physical evidence. Blood at the crime scene matched the victim’s type, and saliva on her body came from someone with the most common blood type. There was no semen and no DNA tests were performed. Investigators relied on bite marks on the victim’s breast and neck. Upon hearing that Ancona had told a friend that a regular customer named Ray Krone was to help her close up the bar the previous night, police asked Krone to make a Styrofoam impression of his teeth for comparison. On December 31, 1991, Krone was arrested and charged with murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault. At his 1992 trial, Krone maintained his innocence, claiming to be asleep in his bed at the time of the crime. Experts for the prosecution, however, testified that the bite-marks found on the victim’s body matched the impression that Krone had made on the Styrofoam and a jury convicted him on the counts of murder and kidnapping. He was sentenced to death and a consecutive 21-year term of imprisonment, respectively. Krone was found not guilty of the sexual assault. Krone won a new trial in 1996 after an appeals court ruled that the prosecution had failed to disclose to the defense a report from an expert which said the bite-marks did not resemble Krone's teeth. At a retrial, however, Krone was convicted again, mainly on the state’s supposed expert bite-mark testimony. This time, however, the judge sentenced him to life in prison, citing doubts about whether or not Krone was the true killer.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/c
The entire commentary can be found at:
See National Registry of Exoneration entry at the link below: "On the morning of December 29, 1991, the body of 36-year-old Kim Ancona was found, nude, in the men’s restroom of the Phoenix, Arizona bar where she worked.Ancona had been fatally stabbed, and the perpetrator left behind little physical evidence. Blood at the crime scene matched the victim’s type, and saliva on her body came from someone with the most common blood type. There was no semen and no DNA tests were performed. Investigators relied on bite marks on the victim’s breast and neck. Upon hearing that Ancona had told a friend that a regular customer named Ray Krone was to help her close up the bar the previous night, police asked Krone to make a Styrofoam impression of his teeth for comparison. On December 31, 1991, Krone was arrested and charged with murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault. At his 1992 trial, Krone maintained his innocence, claiming to be asleep in his bed at the time of the crime. Experts for the prosecution, however, testified that the bite-marks found on the victim’s body matched the impression that Krone had made on the Styrofoam and a jury convicted him on the counts of murder and kidnapping. He was sentenced to death and a consecutive 21-year term of imprisonment, respectively. Krone was found not guilty of the sexual assault. Krone won a new trial in 1996 after an appeals court ruled that the prosecution had failed to disclose to the defense a report from an expert which said the bite-marks did not resemble Krone's teeth. At a retrial, however, Krone was convicted again, mainly on the state’s supposed expert bite-mark testimony. This time, however, the judge sentenced him to life in prison, citing doubts about whether or not Krone was the true killer.
It was not
until 2002, after Krone had served more than 10 years in prison, that
DNA testing proved his innocence. DNA testing conducted on the saliva
and blood found on the victim excluded Krone as the source and instead
matched a man named Kenneth Phillips. Phillips was incarcerated on an
unrelated sex crime and, although he had lived a short distance from the
bar where the victim worked, he had never been considered a suspect in
her murder. On April 8,
2002, Krone was released from prison and on April 24th, the District
Attorney’s office dismissed the charges against him. In 2006, Phillips
pled guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 53 years in prison. Krone later
filed a federal civil rights lawsuit and received $3 million in a
settlement with the city of Phoenix and $1.4 million in a settlement
with Maricopa County. Krone was the 100th former death row inmate freed because of innocence
since the reinstatement of capital punishment in the United States in
1976. He was the twelfth death row inmate whose innocence was proven
through postconviction DNA testing. Prior to his arrest, Krone had no
previous criminal record, had been honorably discharged from the
military, and had worked in the postal service for seven years."
The entire entry can be found at the link below:
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3365The entire entry can be found at the link below:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/c
