A picket and rally were held March 8 at the Statehouse in Boston's government center during a frigid, windy rush hour. The demonstration of about 50 people was called by the Campaign to End the Death Penalty and was mostly college students. Numerous drivers passing by honked support for the banners and picket signs.
The next night, at Boston College, four former death row inmates, three Black and one Puerto Rican, told how they were freed as a result of beating frame-ups. One of them, Joseph Shakaba Brown, was within 13 hours of execution when he was released from a Florida prison in 1987. The forum was titled, "I Was Innocent but the State Tried to Kill Me." The auditorium was packed with 300 students, area residents, and representatives of various media.
Delbert Tibbs was freed in 1977 from a rape and murder conviction in 1974 following a defense campaign. The prosecutor admitted the investigation "had been tainted from the beginning," he said. "I was a simple case of the wrong man being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And it could happen to any one of you."
Wilbert Lee spent 12 years on death row with Freddie Pitts, for the same double murder, between 1963 and 1975. They were pardoned by Florida's governor after another man confessed to the killings. Lee said, "I thought there was our case and maybe a few others like it. But last fall I went to a conference at Northwestern University in Illinois and found 30 others who were innocent and got released. I was shocked! And there are others. Who knows how many didn't get out because they couldn't get the legal help or had no outside support?"
Brown described his frame-up and gave a brief picture of life on death row. "You're locked up in a little cell 23 hours a day, you get an hour out for recreation or exercise -if the weather's good. You get six minutes twice a week for a shower. And I mean six minutes, not six and a half. The last 30 days they move you to a cell just down the hall from the electric chair, where they test it twice a day. They warm it up just to make sure it's working, for you. A lot of guys went crazy before they got executed."
Rolando Cruz, from Chicago, was in prison for 12 years. He put together his own defense and investigative team, which eventually won his freedom. He is now putting police officers and his former prosecutor on trial in Chicago for abusing their power and falsifying evidence.
An announcement was made for the April 24 march in Philadelphia in defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a journalist and Black rights fighter who is framed up on death row.
M.J. Rahn is a member of Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees.