Innocence almost impossible to prove

Fighting to abolish the death penalty is frustrating. But for a person wrongly convicted and sentenced to death, fighting to prove their innocence can be worse than frustrating. It can be almost impossible. It can be so maddening that it causes debilitating mental illnesses and suicide.

César Roberto Fierro, at age 20 ...

People know of the cases of Troy Davis in Georgia and political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal in Pennsylvania due to the political organizing around their cases that has resulted in some national media coverage.

Now two people in Texas are in the national spotlight: Hank Skinner and Todd Willingham.

Skinner has always insisted he was innocent. It sounds easy when he says, “Just test the DNA. If I am guilty, you can execute me. If I am innocent, I am out of here.”

But the district attorney in Pampa, Texas, refuses to turn over the DNA for testing. The U.S. Supreme Court heard Skinner’s case on Oct. 13 and a ruling should come in early 2011. Skinner told Workers World, “What are they afraid of? Just test the DNA. ... If I am finally released, I am moving to Paris, France, to live with my wife. After the hell I have been through, there’s no way I will live in this country.”

and, after 25 years of torment on death row.

Willingham was executed in Texas in 2004 after fighting to prove his innocence for over 12 years. Texas Gov. Rick Perry had a comprehensive report from arson expert Dr. Gerald Hurst on his desk weeks before the execution. Hurst said, “There’s nothing to suggest to any reasonable arson investigator that this was an arson fire. It was just a fire.” Perry ignored the report and allowed the execution.

Willingham’s family is still trying to prove his innocence. On Oct. 14, attorneys for the family held a Court of Inquiry in Judge Charlie Baird’s Austin court room. They presented compelling evidence that could result in Judge Baird declaring Willingham innocent. But the D.A. in Corsicana, Texas, went to the Third Court of Appeals and got an injunction ordering the hearing halted. Baird cannot make a decision. But attorney Barry Scheck from the Innocence Project will appeal the injunction by Oct. 22 and said, “We have the law on our side.”

On Oct. 19, the Public Broadcasting System’s Frontline aired “Death by Fire,” a documentary closely examining the evidence used to convict Willingham. It focuses on a critical finding that was revealed just weeks before Willingham’s execution — that fire investigators apparently relied on outdated arson science to determine that Willingham had set the fire that killed his children.

If Willingham is declared innocent, he would be the first executed person in the U.S. to be posthumously exonerated.

But most innocence cases never make the news until a person walks out of prison a free man or a free woman.

On Oct. 20, Anthony Pierce, on Texas death row for 33 years, will be in court for a new sentencing trial ordered by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. Because his family has no money and his mother, Earlene Pierce, is elderly, ill and is not able to work at age 75, Pierce cannot hire the investigators needed to prove his innocence.

Pierce has consistently refused plea deals for a lesser sentence. Pierce told Workers World, “I’ll never plead guilty to a crime I did not commit. No way. I’ll fight until I can prove my innocence or until they kill me.”

Another likely innocent person can no longer fight to prove his innocence. César Fierro has become so mentally ill that he no longer communicates with anyone, including his attorneys, other prisoners or prison staff. He urinates and defecates on himself and does not bathe, shave or cut his hair. He has withdrawn into a world in which only he lives.

After his arrest for the murder of an El Paso taxi driver in 1979, the El Paso cops called the police in Juárez, Mexico, to pick up Fierro’s parents. They put his father on the phone with Fierro, who told him the cops would torture his mother if he didn’t confess. He signed the confession and has been on death row since February 1980.

After information about the confession came out, the El Paso district attorney said he would not have tried Fierro if he had known the confession was coerced.

No court has given relief, and now Fierro is at the Jester Unit psychiatric prison awaiting execution.

The Texas prison admits to nine suicides on death row since 1974, but many deaths are listed on their Web page as “died of natural causes.” Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement activist Njeri Shakur says, “I believe that other suicides have not been recorded as such and some prison officials may think suicide is a natural death. The fact is that total isolation in a supermax prison is driving prisoners insane, the guilty and the innocent alike.”

There have been 1,229 people executed in the U.S. since executions resumed in 1976, and there have been 138 people released from death row with evidence of their innocence.

Of course not everyone on death row is innocent. But with DNA testing and with more and more prisoners being released, support for capital punishment is dwindling, fewer juries are sentencing people to death, and fewer executions are taking place.

According to Shakur, “We are fighting for the day when this country no longer terrorizes the poor and oppressed communities with legal lynchings. That day will come. We hope innocent men like Hank Skinner, Howard Guidry, Jeff Wood and César Fierro are alive on that day.”

Gloria Rubac is a founder of the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement.