Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (TADP) and Amnesty International Present Freed From Death Row: A Story of Wrongful Conviction
In 1992, Ray Krone, a former Air Force sergeant and mail carrier, was sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit. The case against him was based largely on circumstantial evidence and the testimony of an “expert” witness. He was granted a new trial in 1994 only to be convicted again based on the same evidence. In 2002, Ray became the 100th person exonerated from death row in the U.S. when a court found that DNA at the murder scene pointed to another man.
“I would not trust the state to execute a person for committing a crime against another person,” Krone says. “I know how the system works. It’s not about justice or fairness or equality. Any chance I can, whether I start with one or two people or a whole auditorium filled with people, I’ll tell them what happened to me because if it happened to me, it can happen to anyone.”
Krone, who serves as the Director of Membership and Training at Witness to Innocence, the nation’s only organization composed of, by and for exonerated death row survivors and their loved ones, will be the featured speaker at the Freed from Death Row event on the University of Tennessee Knoxville campus in Hodges Library Auditorium on Tuesday, March 19th, at 7:00 p.m. Krone has spoken to hundreds of groups worldwide and has been featured in publications and on radio and television programs, including People and Parade magazines, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and Good Morning America.
Reverend Stacy Rector, Executive Director of TADP, will also discuss the problems with Tennessee’s current death penalty system, including the risk of executing the innocent. This event is part of Amnesty’s 2013 Human Rights Week. Other sponsors of the event include: UTK’s Department of Sociology, Africana Studies, Black Law Students Association, Department of Political Science, and the Department of Geography.
Parking is available in the lot on Philip Fulmer Way and Andy Holt Avenue.
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