Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Ray Krone; Arizona. Junk bite mark science case: Ray Krone explains why wrongful convictions like the one he experienced mean it's time to end the death penalty..."With another Arizona death row inmate taking his case to the Supreme Court, justices ought to keep people like me in mind."..." 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."..."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."


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.
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=3365

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/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy; Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.