BY JOHN STUDER
CHICAGO - "My name is Randall Dale Adams. The state of Texas
tried to kill me for a murder I did not commit," Adams told a
crowd of hundreds of opponents of the death penalty at
Northwestern University Law School November 14. Hundreds more
watched on closed circuit television in other rooms at the
school.
"I was sentenced to death in 1977 and released in 1989," Adams continued. "If the state had gotten its way, I would be dead today." Adams then went to a table across the stage, put a flower in a large vase, and signed his name on a statement opposing the death penalty.
Twenty-seven others, all of whom won their freedom after serving time on death row, joined Adams in reciting the facts about their situation.
The last was Sonia Jacobs, one of two women who spoke. She explained how she was convicted in 1976 by the state of Florida and won release in 1992 after her supporters discovered evidence that she was not guilty. However, after Jacobs finished her story, she did not sit down.
"Unfortunately," she added, "the proof that I and my companion, Jesse Tafero, were innocent came forward too late for him. The state of Florida executed him in 1990."
The National Conference on Wrongful Conviction and the Death Penalty lasted three days and gathered hundreds of lawyers, law students, activists against the death penalty, members of local defense committees fighting for justice for those behind bars on false charges, and many news reporters.
The conference came on the heels of the recent decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to let the death sentence against Mumia Abu-Jamal stand, and a few days before the scheduled execution of Willie Enoch in Illinois.
Lawrence Marshall, a law professor at Northwestern, and others decided to organize the conference more than a year ago after a number of victories that forced the release of falsely convicted prisoners on Illinois' death row.
Nine people sentenced to death in Illinois since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the use of the death penalty in 1976 have later been proven not guilty. They were the victims of police and prosecutors' frame-ups, confessions beaten out of prisoners, testimony from jail-house snitches, and other miscarriages of justice.
Leaflets documenting the cases of dozens of inmates on death row fighting to overturn their convictions and win their freedom were available in the literature room. Among the list were Aaron Patterson in Illinois, William Mayo in Ohio, and Erskine Johnson in Tennessee.
Prominent opponents of the death penalty from around the world attended. Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, former middleweight boxing champion, who was sentenced to death in New Jersey and now lives in Canada, as well as Serio D'Elia of Hands Off Cain in Italy.
Many of the panels at the conference were oriented to lawyers and law students, focusing on topics such as how to use DNA evidence to overturn convictions, how to defend the mentally ill or seriously retarded, and how best to use the media to apply public pressure.
Other opponents of the death penalty used the conference to strengthen their protest efforts.
"The death penalty has been abolished once before in this country," said Robert Meeropol, son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were executed during the 1950s anti-communist witch-hunt. "The next time, we have to make sure that it stays abolished for good."
Conference organizers identified 75 people around the country who had won freedom from death row after being framed up. The 29 attending the conference included Rolando Cruz, who, along with Alejandro Hernández, was framed up in Naperville, Illinois; two of the "Ford Heights Four," named after the Chicago suburb where they lived; and Clarence Brandley from Texas.
Brandley was one of five high school janitors at a school where a 16-year-old was raped and murdered. Brandley was the only Black. "We need someone for this," the cop who arrested Brandley told him. "Since you're the nigger, you're elected."
Jay Smith, a Pennsylvania high school principal framed for the murder, told the conference that his case was ironic because when he was young he had demonstrated against the execution of the Rosenbergs.
According to material from the NAACP Legal and Educational Defense Fund distributed at the conference, there are currently 3,517 people on death row in the United States.
The conference concluded with the establishment of a national Innocence Network, composed of law schools around the country who pledge to assign at least one professor to work on attempting to overturn death penalty cases and to institute classes on police and prosecution frame-ups.
One theme at the conference was the need to fight to overturn the execution of Willie Enoch in Illinois, scheduled for November 18.
"We will succeed in getting this execution stopped," Jed Stone, Enoch's attorney, told the Militant. "Willie was convicted in 1983. Last year we won a fight to allow DNA testing of evidence used to convict him. But we have been denied the right to see the evidence, denied the right to see the test results, and denied the right to have it tested ourselves.
"The guy who tested it for the court, William Frank, has been proven to have falsified DNA testing results before," Stone said.
On November 16 Stone presented a letter to Gov. James Edgar from two of the jurors in Enoch's trial urging that fair DNA tests be allowed. He also presented a letter from 16 scientists, including four Nobel laureates, urging the DNA tests be turned over for review. A demonstration on behalf of Enoch was held in Chicago that afternoon.
The next day, the Illinois Supreme Court granted Enoch a three-month stay and ordered that the DNA evidence be released.
John Studer is a member of United Steelworkers of America Local 1011.