Punishing the Innocent

Appalachian Symposium Focuses on the Question of Justice

Story by Kathleen McFadden

Few debates are as hotly argued as the pros and cons of the death penalty. As a society, we are both horrified and frightened by senseless and brutal crime and by its lifelong effects on its victims. As a society, we want to feel that justice will prevail and that our safety will be assured, so we collectively rely on our law enforcement and prosecutorial infrastructure to ensure that the guilty are punished.

But as with all human systems, our law enforcement and prosecutorial infrastructure is not infallible. People make mistakes. Sometimes people lie. Sometimes people manipulate the system for personal or political gain. And sometimes, the innocent are punished for crimes they did not commit.

Appalachian State University is presenting a variety of events spanning three weeks that takes a close look at the societal and individual costs of wrongful imprisonment and the death penalty.

Through presentations, a panel discussion, films, a play and appearances by two men who were wrongfully convicted of heinous crimes, sentenced and later exonerated, the events at Appalachian provide a multi-format mix of ways to view the issues, consider the status quo and think about our own prejudices and fears. Admission to all events, except the play, is free, and the public is invited.
The symposium is timely because the U.S. Supreme Court recently heard a challenge to the constitutionality of the mixture of chemicals used in lethal injections in Kentucky. The case, Baze v. Rees, established a de facto moratorium on lethal injection executions in the United States.

The court heard arguments in the case on January 7. The decision is pending.

Meet the Exonerees

Two men who were wrongfully convicted of capital crimes, served time in prison and were later exonerated are participating in the symposium at Appalachian.

Delbert Tibbs

Delbert Tibbs was arrested in 1974 and charged with the murder of a white man and the rape of his girlfriend. The crime took place on a Florida highway, and except for the “rape victim,” there were no other witnesses. Tibbs, who was hitchhiking 200 miles away from the scene, was arrested and charged with the crimes.

Despite a significantly flawed trial, Tibbs was sentenced to death. Two years later, the Florida Supreme Court overturned his conviction for lack of evidence. Since his release, Tibbs has lectured all over the United States on the issue of capital punishment and has participated in workshops, forums and panels with community groups all over the nation.

Delbert Tibbs is portrayed in the play The Exonerated, being presented at Appalachian from Tuesday through Saturday, March 4 to 8, as part of the symposium. And Tibbs himself will speak at Appalachian on Tuesday, February 26.
For more information about Delbert Tibbs, click to www.delberttibbs.com.

Darryl Hunt

When he was 19 years old, Darryl Hunt was arrested for the brutal rape and murder of a Winston-Salem reporter. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment based on an identification made by a former Ku Klux Klan member. No physical evidence linked Hunt to the crime.

Ten years later—in 1994—DNA testing cleared Hunt, but he spent another 10 years in prison before being released.

The Darryl Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice grew out of Hunt’s determination to help others after serving more than 18 years for a crime he never committed. The project is a nonprofit organization with three primary goals:
• To provide assistance to individuals who have been wrongfully incarcerated
• To help ex-offenders obtain the skills, guidance and support they need as they return to life outside the prison system
• To advocate for changes in the justice system so innocent people won’t spend time in prison

Hunt has spoken to more than 200 conferences, schools, film festivals and religious groups to spread his message of reform and compassion.

The film chronicling his case—The Trials of Darryl Hunt—will be show at Appalachian on Tuesday, February 19, and Hunt himself will participate in a panel discussion on Thursday, February 21.

For more information about Darryl Hunt, click to www.darrylhuntproject.org/about.html.

 

The Real Death Penalty: Capital Punishment in America Schedule

Appalachian State University is presenting a variety of events in The Real Death Penalty: Capital Punishment in America symposium that begins Wednesday, February 13.

Wednesday, February 13, 7:00 p.m.
Presentation by Dr. Matthew Robinson: The Empirical Realities of Capital Punishment: Does It Work? Is It Good Policy?
Room 114, Belk Library and Information Commons
Friday, February 15, 6:30 p.m.

Documentary Film: The Thin Blue Line
Room 114, Belk Library and Information Commons
Tuesday, February 19, 7:00 p.m.

Documentary Film: The Trials of Darryl Hunt
Room 114, Belk Library and Information Commons
Thursday, February 21, 7:00 p.m.

Panel Discussion: Never Truly Free: Bringing Voice to the Reality of Wrongful Convictions
Room 114, Belk Library and Information Commons
Friday, February 22, 6:30 p.m.

Documentary film: Deadline
Room 114, Belk Library and Information Commons
Monday, February 25, 7:00 p.m.

Presentation by Dr. Margaret Vandiver: The Human Costs of Homicide and Capital Punishment: Families of Victims and Offender
Room 114, Belk Library and Information Commons
Tuesday, February 26, 2:00 p.m.

Presentation by Delbert Tibbs: My Story: A Death Row Exoneree Speaks
Table Rock Room, Plemmons Student Union
Wednesday, February 27, 2:15 p.m.

Presentation by Drs. Kimberly Cook and Saundra Westervelt: Life After Death Row: Recovering from a Wrongful Capital Conviction
Room 114, Belk Library and Information Commons
Friday, February 29, 6:30 p.m.

Documentary film: After Innocence
Room 114, Belk Library and Information Commons
Tuesday through Saturday, March 4 to 8, 8:00 p.m.
Play: The Exonerated
I.G. Greer Studio

Films

The films selected for screening during Appalachian’s The Real Death Penalty: Capital Punishment in America symposium look at the issue of wrongful conviction from three perspectives: the individual stories of two unjustly convicted men, the political pressure and moral scruples that an Illinois governor faced head on and the tough climb back to life by seven innocent men after their release from prison.

Documentary film: The Thin Blue Line

Friday, February 15, 6:30 p.m.
Room 114, Belk Library

The 1988 film The Thin Blue Line tells the true story of the arrest and conviction of Randall Adams for the murder of Dallas policeman Robert Wood. On a dark night in 1976, Wood was shot dead by someone inside a car he had stopped for a minor traffic violation. Billed as "the first movie mystery to actually solve a murder," the film is credited with overturning Adams’ conviction and death sentence.

According to filmmaker Errol Morris, “There were five key prosecution witnesses in the 1977 trial against Randall Adams. I was able to discredit their testimony and to establish that each and every one of them committed perjury.”

Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that The Thin Blue Line is “a movie that is documentary and drama, investigation and reverie, a meditation on the fact that Adams was plucked from the center of his life and locked up forever for a crime that no reasonable person could seriously believe he committed.”

Documentary film: The Trials of Darryl Hunt

Tuesday, February 19, 7:00 p.m.
Room 114, Belk Library

In 1984, Deborah Sykes, a young white newspaper reporter, was assaulted, raped, sodomized and stabbed to death just blocks from where she worked in Winston-Salem. Though no physical evidence implicated him, Darryl Hunt, a 19-year-old black man, was convicted of the crime and sentenced to life in prison.
Hunt was charged with Sykes' murder largely on the strength of an eyewitness identification by a former Ku Klux Klan member, and was convicted by a jury of 11 whites and one black.

Ten years later, DNA testing proved that Hunt did not rape Sykes and cast serious doubts on his involvement in her murder, but he spent another decade behind bars. It wasn't until 2004, through the help of an investigative series by Winston-Salem journalist Phoebe Zerwick, that he was finally cleared. The HBO documentary The Trials of Darryl Hunt tells his story and the story of those who fought to clear his name.

More than a decade in the making, Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg's award-winning documentary is told from the point of view of the principal subjects—Mark Rabil, the unyielding defense attorney, and Hunt, the wrongfully convicted man—and challenges the assumption that all Americans have access to unbiased justice.

Documentary film: Deadline

Friday, February 22, 6:30 p.m.
Room 114, Belk Library

Shortly after he was elected, Illinois Governor George Ryan, a tough-on-crime, pro-death penalty Republican, faced a serious challenge to his long-held beliefs about crime and punishment. A group of undergraduate journalism students at Northwestern University discovered evidence that proved a man on Death Row, Anthony Porter, was wrongly convicted. Their revelation came just a few hours before the man’s scheduled execution. Then another Death Row inmate was found innocent. And another. Reporters from The Chicago Tribune unearthed evidence suggesting that there could be no absolute guarantee that the Illinois criminal justice system had not, or would not, execute an innocent person.

In response, the governor set up special clemency hearings for each person on Death Row. Each inmate’s lawyer was given one-half hour to make a case for his or her client’s life; each prosecutor was allotted an equal time to prove the need for the inmate’s execution.

Deadline’s access to these hearings, to Death Row prisoners, to the exonerated men and to Governor Ryan brings its audiences directly into the emotional and legal storm surrounding Ryan’s investigation and subsequent decision.

On January 10, 2003, just three days before his last day in office, Ryan pardoned four men. But it was his move the next day that changed the course of judicial history in the United States. Unwilling to uphold a system he found to be fraught with error, Ryan granted blanket clemency to the remaining 167 people on Illinois’ Death Row, an unprecedented move for a U.S. governor.

In his review of the film, Michael Wilmington of The Chicago Tribune wrote, “It gives you a chance to ruminate on some crucial questions of human error, justice and life-and-death.”

Documentary film: After Innocence

Friday, February 29, 6:30 p.m.
Room 114, Belk Library

The 2005 winner of the Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize, After Innocence tells the story of seven innocent men—including a police officer, an army sergeant and a young father—wrongfully imprisoned for decades and then released after DNA evidence proved their innocence.

The film examines how the men were thrust back into society with little or no support from the system that put them behind bars. While the public views exonerations as success stories—wrongs that have been righted—After Innocence shows that the human toll of wrongful imprisonment can last far longer than the sentences served. The movie addresses the question of compensation after wrongful imprisonment. Unlike paroled prisoners, who have a network of social services to help them reenter society, the exonerated receive little guidance or support. What does society owe these people for what they lost, not only in wages and career opportunities, but also as compensation for their suffering and humiliation?

The film raises basic questions about human rights and society's moral obligation to the innocent and spotlights the flaws in the criminal justice system that lead to wrongful conviction of the innocent.

The film, written by Jessica Sanders and Marc Simon, was made in collaboration with the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal clinic founded in 1992 at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in Manhattan. The clinic only handles only cases in which post-conviction DNA testing can yield conclusive proof of innocence. Its work has helped exonerate more than 160 people, and the center’s lawyers estimate that DNA testing could free thousands more.

According to an LA Times review, After Innocence is “even-handed but quietly devastating.”

The Exonerated

Appalachian’s Department of Theatre and Dance will present The Exonerated at I.G. Green Studio Theatre Tuesday through Saturday, March 4 to 8, at 8:00 p.m. Admission is $4.

The Exonerated chronicles the experiences of six innocent people who spent from 2 to 22 years on Death Row and were eventually cleared—often thanks to an attorney who took on their case pro bono or dedicated law school students who wanted to right a wrong. The play follows the six innocent victims through their arrests, trials, incarcerations and eventual releases when found innocent beyond doubt.

Culled from interviews, letters, transcripts, case files and the public record, The Exonerated tells the true stories of the six innocent survivors of Death Row in their own words:
• Kerry Max Cook, convicted in 1978 of murdering a woman acquaintance. He was wrongly imprisoned in Texas for 22 years.
• Robert Earl Hayes, convicted in 1991 of murdering and raping a co-worker. He was wrongly imprisoned in Florida for six years.
• Delbert Tibbs, convicted in 1974 of murdering a man and raping his companion. He was wrongly imprisoned in Florida for three years.
• Sonia Jacobs, convicted in 1976 of murdering two policemen. She was wrongly imprisoned in Florida for 16 years.
• Gary Gauger, convicted in 1993 of murdering his mother and father. He was wrongly imprisoned in Illinois for three years.
• David Keaton, convicted in 1971 of murder. He was wrongly imprisoned in Florida for two years.

Originally produced in New York in 2002, The Exonerated ran for more than 600 performances off-Broadway with performers such as Gabriel Byrne, Kristin Davis, Richard Dreyfuss, Mia Farrow, Sara Gilbert, Jeff Goldblum, Lyle Lovett and John Spencer rotating through three of the lead roles before touring the country with stars such as Robin Williams, Brian Dennehy, Stockard Channing and Avery Brooks.

In a 2004 interview, co-playwright Jessica Blank said, “We hope our audiences come out asking questions about what kind of society we have, what kind of society we want to have, and what we can do to make it change.”