PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Amrine was freed after the three prisoners who testified against him at trial recanted and admitted they lied for their own benefit. But the Missouri Attorney General’s Office — which has fought just about every wrongful conviction claim to come before it in recent memory, including Kevin Strickland’s in Jackson County — argued that Amrine should be executed in the name of finality. “Are you suggesting ... even if we find that Mr. Amrine is actually innocent, he should be executed?” Laura Denvir Stith, a state Supreme Court justice, asked of Assistant Attorney General Frank Jung in February 2003. Jung responded: “That’s correct, your honor.” Amrine prevailed and went home."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "A fundraiser has been started for Amrine by the group Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty. Amrine’s supporters say he continues to face financial burdens and lives in a house without running water. Prisoners who are guilty and get paroled receive more resources than an innocent person who is exonerated, Amrine noted. While Missouri has a compensation law, it’s so narrow that most exonerees, including Amrine, do not qualify. Earlier this month, Gov. Mike Parson vetoed a bill that would have expanded restitution."
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STORY: "Joe Amrine, sentenced to die in Missouri for crime he did not commit marks 20 years of freedom, The St. Louis Dispatch (Luke Nozicka and Katie Moore) reports, on July 20, 2023. (Luke Nozicka joined The Kansas City Star in 2019 and is a member of the investigative team. In 2021, his reporting was credited with helping to free Kevin Strickland, a Kansas City man who spent four decades in prison for a triple murder he did not commit. Katie Moore is a breaking news/enterprise reporter);
GIST: "Joe Amrine was released 20 years ago from a Missouri prison after spending more than 16 years on death row, at times coming within hours of execution for a murder he did not commit.
He lives in Kansas City, where he grew up, and marked two decades of freedom on Friday.
He’s been able to enjoy time with his son and six grandchildren — five girls and one boy — who range in age from 12 to 26.
“I’m loving it,” said Amrine, now 66.
In 1985, Amrine was more than halfway through a 15-year sentence for robbing a Safeway store with an unloaded gun when another prisoner, Gary “Fox” Barber, was stabbed to death at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City.
Based on the word of three other prisoners — at times dubious testimony that has led to other wrongful convictions in Missouri — Amrine, who is Black, was found guilty the next year of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to death by an all-white jury.
During his 6,043 days on death row, Amrine himself faced execution four times.
His case illustrated what lawyers describe as the historical callousness of the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, which argued in 2003 — when Democrat Jay Nixon led that office — that Amrine should be executed even if the state’s highest court found him innocent.
Instead, Amrine was exonerated and released at age 46.
His life since July 28, 2003, has not been easy. At times he has struggled financially and emotionally. But in April, he got a cleaning job at Kauffman Stadium, where he makes $16 an hour, the highest wage he has ever earned.
“I’m liking it,” he said Friday. “I’m cleaning bathrooms, but it’s a job.”
Amrine has also had speaking engagements, where he has shared his story and spoken out against the death penalty.
Since 1989, Missouri has executed 96 prisoners, including ones with claims of innocence. Four have been exonerated and released from death row. Amrine told The Star he does not like those odds.
“I’m a perfect example,” he said. “I could have been executed. Our system’s not perfect.”
A fundraiser has been started for Amrine by the group Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty. Amrine’s supporters say he continues to face financial burdens and lives in a house without running water.
Prisoners who are guilty and get paroled receive more resources than an innocent person who is exonerated, Amrine noted.
While Missouri has a compensation law, it’s so narrow that most exonerees, including Amrine, do not qualify. Earlier this month, Gov. Mike Parson vetoed a bill that would have expanded restitution.
‘He should be executed?’
Amrine was freed after the three prisoners who testified against him at trial recanted and admitted they lied for their own benefit.
But the Missouri Attorney General’s Office — which has fought just about every wrongful conviction claim to come before it in recent memory, including Kevin Strickland’s in Jackson County — argued that Amrine should be executed in the name of finality.
“Are you suggesting ... even if we find that Mr. Amrine is actually innocent, he should be executed?” Laura Denvir Stith, a state Supreme Court justice, asked of Assistant Attorney General Frank Jung in February 2003.
Jung responded: “That’s correct, your honor.”
Amrine prevailed and went home.
In a story three days after he was exonerated, a Star reporter wrote, “He says he’s like a man living a dream.”
At the same time, Amrine had trouble sleeping and was unfamiliar with items such as remote controls and cordless phones.
He has relied on a food pantry and has had his water and electricity cut off for weeks at a time.
He suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and survivor’s guilt. He hoped it would get better with time — it hasn’t.
This year, the Missouri General Assembly passed a bill that would have allowed more people exonerated by the courts to receive restitution, though it would not have been retroactive.
Only wrongfully convicted people who were cleared by DNA evidence are eligible for payments from the state.
The measure would have increased the amount of money owed to the wrongly convicted from a yearly cap of $36,500 to $65,000.
When Parson vetoed the bill, he argued that Missouri should not pay for prosecutorial errors at the local level.
But that is how it works in other states that provide compensation, experts say. Some innocence attorneys called the rationale “bogus” because state investigators at prisons and the AG’s office have wrongly convicted Missourians.
“The whole rationale just doesn’t hold water,” said Kansas City-based lawyer Kent Gipson, adding that Amrine’s wrongful conviction was “squarely the fault of (the Department of Corrections).”
As Amrine reflected Friday, he said, “The Lord ain’t through with me.”
“That’s what gets me up every day ... I’m not no hold-me-down religious person but I believe in God and my point is that if God was through with me, I’d be dead. Until then, he ain’t through with me. That’s what gets me up in the morning, that’s what makes me feel good.”
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.stltoday.com/news/
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NATIONAL REGISTRY OF EXONERATIONS: PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Amrine’s public defender met with Amrine and other witnesses for a total of 45 minutes in preparation for trial. He failed to interview two witnesses, both of whom claimed in post-conviction hearings to have been playing cards with Amrine at the time of the murder, and one of whom claimed to have seen Russell stab Barber. He did not point out major inconsistencies in the testimony against Amrine, or reveal that Russell had also been a suspect in the crime. He failed to emphasize the testimony of Officer Noble, whose account of what happened conflicted with Russell’s, and who was the only non-inmate to witness the crime, and the only one with nothing to gain from his testimony. Finally, he allowed dried blood found on Amrine’s shirt to be admitted as evidence against him, despite the fact that a state serologist had said he could not determine the age or type of the blood, because it was not fresh. Amrine, who is African-American, was convicted of first-degree murder by an all-white jury, and sentenced to death. "
National Registry Updated July 23, 2015. Perjury or False Accusation, Official Misconduct, Inadequate Legal Defense Alexandra Gross.
In November 2001, the Missouri Attorney General asked the Missouri Supreme Court to set an execution date for Amrine.
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=2993
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. 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;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan;
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-1234880143/
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