Not guilty

Ray Krone spent nearly three years on death row for the 1991 slaying of a woman in Phoenix. He was cleared and freed after more than 10 years in prison when DNA found at the murder scene implicated another man in the killing of Kim Ancona.

Krone was one of two dozen people once sentenced to death row who rallied at Capitol Square Saturday with Witness to Innocence and Virginia opponents of capital punishment. After the rally, the 24 and their advocates discussed their experiences with the public at St. Peter's Catholic Church.

"All of us are here representing a lot of different states and each one of those states was sure that we were guilty, sure that we were murderers, that we were monsters that deserved to die," Krone said. "By the grace of God we proved they were wrong."

The exonerated former prisoners asked Virginians to end capital punishment and encouraged state legislators to quit adding to the growing list of criminal offenses that qualify for the death penalty.

"One of the most powerful reasons to question the death penalty is represented here today by these innocent men and women," said Stephen A. Northrop, executive director of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. One of the 24 is a woman.

"They were convicted and sentenced to death and, but for the chance to prove their innocence, would have been executed," Northrop said.

Virginia is second only to Texas in the number of people it has executed since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. The Death Penalty Information Center reports that the number of executions in the United States declined by 12 percent in 2010 compared to the previous year and that the number of people sentenced to die is nearing historic lows. The center attributes the reductions to changing attitudes toward capital punishment, as well as problems with the availability of chemicals used in lethal injections.

Currently, Virginia's death row in Waverly has 14 inmates: 12 men and two women.

The Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project states that 133 people in 26 states have been released from death row because of wrongful convictions.

"It is possible that a few of the hundreds of exonerated defendants we have studied were involved in the crimes for which they were convicted, despite our efforts to exclude such cases," stated a 2005 report in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. "On the other hand, it is certain-this is the clearest implication of our study-that many defendants who are not on this list, no doubt thousands, have been falsely convicted of serious crimes but have not been exonerated."

Only one innocent person has been exonerated from death row in Virginia history. Earl Washington Jr. came within nine days of being executed for the June 1982 murder of Rebecca Williams, 19, of Culpeper. He served nearly 18 years in prison before DNA testing cleared him in 2000 and implicated a convicted rapist in her slaying.

According to the Washington Post, a jury found that Washington was convicted based on a false confession manipulated by a now-deceased Virginia State Police investigator. Washington was awarded a $1.9 million settlement and completely pardoned by Gov. Tim Kaine in 2007. He has since married and lives in Virginia Beach with his wife.

The Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project states that police misconduct was responsible for unjustly convicting half of the prisoners who were later exonerated. Other reasons for false conviction are mistaken eyewitness identifications, inadequate defense counsel, and lab fraud.

Because of the Washington case, a 2001 Virginia law allows inmates who claim innocence to seek DNA testing at any time.

Other Virginians sentenced to life in prison or other heavy sentences have also been released, most recently Thomas Haynesworth, Jr. who served 27 years for sex crimes he did not commit. ('Unjustly served,' 3/25)

Mindful of Washington's brush with death, Sen. A. Donald McEachin, a Richmond Democrat, argued against adding new capital offenses. "How dare we continue when we know that we don't always get it right," he said.

Christians are widely split on the death penalty. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2005 stated, "Ending the death penalty would be one important step away from a culture of death and toward building a culture of life."

And opponents of the death penalty cite studies that say states with the death penalty see higher crime rates than states without the death penalty.

However, many evangelicals say that ending the death penalty would directly contradict the government's role in Romans 13:4 to "bear the sword."

"There are certain cases where a crime is so heinous that in order to meet the demands of justice, more than prison is required. Just desert demands the life be taken," wrote Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship ministries, in an opinion published on the organization's website. "To justify punishment by whether it 'deters or cures' is the triumph of sociology over justice."

But he emphasized that the justice system needs to be reformed to prevent wrongful convictions.

"Capital punishment should be used only when there is no doubt of the defendant's guilt," Colson said. "We need to be ready to contend for a biblically informed view, one which safeguards the innocent but recognizes there are some cases so egregious that the death penalty is the only way to balance the scales."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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