Another Innocent Inmate Released from Death Row
GLARING DEFICIENCIES IN A TERRIBLY FLAWED SYSTEM LEADS TO 114TH EXONERATION
Nashville, TN: Exactly one month ago Joyce House of Crossville spoke to Nashville media about her innocent son Paul, who was wrongfully convicted and remains on death row 18 years later. Today, Gordon Randy Steidl walked out of the Danville Correctional Facility in Illinois, 17 years after being sent to death row for crimes he never committed. Thorough investigations by the State Police, the Attorney General, the Edgar County prosecutor, federal judges, and journalism students have found no evidence of Steidl's involvement in the tragic murders of Dyke and Karen Rhoads.
Steidl became the nation's 114th exonerated death row inmate today, according to an announcement made by the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). Steidl's conviction was thrown out last year because of the poor quality of representation he was given at trial. Edgar County prosecutors announced today that they will not retry the case. Steidl spent 12 years before being freed.
“The series of errors that led to this erroneous conviction and the time it took for Steidl to be freed are shocking,” said Randy Tatel, Executive Director of the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing. “Especially when combined with the continuous exposure of such cases around the country. The demonstrated risk of executing the innocent has far exceeded reasonable bounds.”
Speaking with Joyce House last month was Ray Krone, the nation’s 100th death row exonoree. Krone spoke with students and the media about the prosecutorial misconduct and junk science posing as evidence that landed him on death row. DNA evidence exonerated Krone after more than 10 years behind bars for a murder he didn’t commit.
DNA evidence has now cleared House of the 1985 rape of Carolyn Muncey before her murder in Union County. The prosecutor told the jury that covering up the rape was the motive for Muncey’s murder.
Michael McCormick spent 15 years on Tennessee’s death row before being released on bond last November. DNA evidence and a judge’s ruling that McCormick’s supposed “confession” was the product of serious coercion led to his release. If prosecutor’s fail to re-file charges against McCormick he will become Tennessee’s first death row exonoree. He will not be the last.
Erskine Johnson, an African-American male, was convicted and sentenced to die by an all-white jury in Shelby County in spite of 6 eyewitnesses who placed Johnson in St. Louis at the time of the murder.
“The danger that innocent people will be executed because of errors in the criminal justice system is getting worse,” said Tatel. “The death penalty is a public policy that fails victims, the accused and our core constitutional value of fairness. The best solution is to use alternatives and simply abolish the death penalty.”
