To: aapjorganizing@yahoogroups.com, AZGP@yahoogroups.com From: "Richard Scott" rscotttoo@hotmail.com Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 10:39:00 -0800 Subject: [aapjorganizing] join Ray Krone Monday, February 20 in Phoenix about capital punishment Monday, February 20 in Phoenix One Monday February 20, several Greens will join Ray Krone in confronting the Arizona legislature about capital punishment. Ray was an ordinary guy-- thirty something, former Vet, US Postal Letter Carrier, no criminal record, liked to play sports in his spare time, including dart tournaments at the local beer joint. A woman at the bar was murdered, and someone in the Phoenix Police Dept took a notion it was Ray. Overnight, he found himself in a different world, where bias and error were helped by incompetence and a willingness to play with the evidence. Ray ended up on Arizona's Death Row. Some of those endless appeals you hear about got him a new trial, and a better attorney, and, incomprehensibly, the same result, except this time the judge spoke of a "lingering residual doubt" about Ray's guilt, and gave hi Life in prison instead. It was only after ten years of appeals and trials and hope and despair, that a judge agreed to check DNA evidence-- if Ray's Pennsylvania farm family mortgaged everything they had left to pay for the testing. The tests not only showed that Ray was guilty, but showed who did the crime, a man whose DNA was on file because he was in prison for a similar crime committees a few weeks after the one Ray was convicted for. A man who lived two blocks away, who was on parole at the time for similar crimes, and who the police had interviewed, but rejected as a suspect because they had decided it was Ray. Ray says that he is sure that 5 or 6 other guys whom he met on Death Row are also innocent, but no DNA evidence is involved in their circumstances. But the criminal justice system in Arizona does not like to admit that there are corrupt or incompetent officials in it, and that anyone on Death Row is ever innocent. If somebody gets off, it is a "technicality" and the "beat the system and got away with murder." Sen John Kyl wants to shorten appeals. The AZ legislature wants to look the other way Annually a publication called "The Red Book" is distributed to lawmakers by the state's prosecutors. It has mug shots and gruesome stories of killings in it. It is updated to show the new guys, and to reclassify those executed or who got a new trial and were given a lighter sentence. But the word Exonerated does not appear in it. Four years later, Ray Krone is still listed as serving a life sentence. There are errors also about two other guys who were once on Death row and are now walking free, but Ray's story is the one they cannot deny. DNA. Ray is going to deliver a Correction Page Insert to the lawmakers, to keep with their Red Book. It will have the Words Exonerated and Innocent on it. And it will ask the lawmakers how they intend to prevent other innocents from being executed. He will explain how "lengthy appeals" saved his life, while they were trying to kill him He will say that it is time to end the death penalty in Arizona. Contact Claudia at 622-3339 if you would like to join us there. Ray needs some folks to stand with him. It's the least we can do.