{"id":2447781,"date":"2019-08-20T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-21T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/life-after\/"},"modified":"2019-08-20T22:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-08-21T04:00:00","slug":"life-after-death-row","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/life-after-death-row\/","title":{"rendered":"Life after death row"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Gary Drinkard was on pain pills and muscle relaxers when he was arrested for robbery and murder. His half-sister and her common-law husband were granted immunity if they testified against him. He was acquitted and exonerated after being wrongly convicted and imprisoned.<\/strong>
Witness To Innocence | Special to the Daily<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

EAGLE \u2014 Kwame Ajamu was just 18 when he was locked in an Ohio prison, sentenced to die for a robbery and murder he did not commit.<\/p>\n

Twenty-eight years later he walked out of that of prison because, as the parole board told him, \u201cWe\u2019re going to let you go because we think you\u2019re a good one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth is that I was innocent,\u201d Ajamu told an audience Monday night in Eagle. \u201cThe guilty suffer, but if you\u2019re not guilty \u2026 you cannot imagine the depth that their brains and hearts go to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along with everything else, Ajamu suffered humiliation \u2014 going to the bathroom with 34 others, showering with 200 and \u201cmy 18-year-old butt.\u201d After 28 years in prison, it took him another 11 years to be exonerated.<\/p>\n

Sabrina Butler-Smith was 19 when she was sentenced to die in prison, convicted of killing her infant son. He died of heart and kidney problems, not at his mother\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n

Gary Drinkard was sentenced to die in an Alabama prison for a robbery and murder he did not commit. He was barely in the same area code when it happened, but because he\u2019d had regular scrapes with the law, the investigation focused on him and didn\u2019t end until he was wrongly sentenced to death.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were going to kill me for something I didn\u2019t do,\u201d Drinkard said.<\/p>\n

All three were part of a panel discussion brought to Eagle on Monday evening by Witness to Innocence, the only national organization composed of and led by exonerated death row survivors and their families.<\/p>\n

\u2018Their stories are important\u2019<\/p>\n

They were here because Assistant District Attorney Heidi McCollum invited them. During a training session last year, she met three other exonerees from Witness to Innocence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought their stories were important to be told and that\u2019s why I invited them to Colorado,\u201d McCollum said.<\/p>\n

Enlightenment was her goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were looking to help educate our community on this typically unseen part of the criminal justice system,\u201d McCollum said.<\/p>\n

Coloradans are better off than many, McCollum said. This state\u2019s prosecutors\u2019 No. 1 charge is to \u201cdo justice,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The state has a robust public defender system that provides criminal defendants with competent attorneys. In fact, entry-level public defenders are paid more than entry-level prosecutors, McCollum said. The state\u2019s rules of evidence make it tough for police and prosecutors to withhold evidence from defense attorneys. If they do, they\u2019re branded for life.<\/p>\n

No judge in the 5th Judicial District \u2014 Eagle, Lake, Summit and Clear Creek counties \u2014 has ever handed down a death sentence in a capital murder case.<\/p>\n

Generally, there is not a move to investigate a case after an exoneration.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me and others in this room, that doesn\u2019t sit right,\u201d McCollum said.<\/p>\n

How it happened to them<\/p>\n

Most prisoners are behind bars because they\u2019re guilty, Ajamu said. Some are not. Some are the victims of misconduct by police, prosecutors and inexperienced or incompetent defense attorneys.<\/p>\n

If anything changes, it will probably start with prosecutors, Elizabeth Zitrin with Witness to Innocence said.<\/p>\n

There are no rich people on death row, they all agreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I\u2019d had good lawyers to begin with this would not have happened,\u201d Butler-Smith said.<\/p>\n

She says her attorney in her first trial ate candy all the time to cover his constant drinking.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was black, poor and in the wrong place at the wrong time,\u201d Butler-Smith said.<\/p>\n

Drinkard said his attorneys were 25 years old and had never handled a case of this importance. The prosecutor was trying to get convictions and had political ambitions.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe let the killers walk to get one conviction,\u201d Drinkard said.<\/p>\n

Drinkard admits he had not been an angel and had a criminal record. Decatur, Alabama, police decided he had murdered an automobile junk dealer. A bad back, pain killers and muscle relaxers had him on the couch during the killing. His conviction rested primarily on testimony by his half-sister and her common-law husband, both facing charges for unrelated crimes. In exchange for testifying, all the charges against Gary\u2019s half-sister were dismissed.<\/p>\n

In 2000, the Alabama Supreme Court ordered a new trial because of prosecutorial misconduct. With the help of the Southern Center for Human Rights, Drinkard won an acquittal in 2001.<\/p>\n

Butler-Smith was a 17-year old mother of two. She had a 2-year-old daughter and a 9-month old son. Her daughter was with her grandparents. She put her 9-month-old son to sleep and went jogging. When she returned, he wasn\u2019t breathing. She picked him up and ran outside banging on doors. Following someone\u2019s instructions, she did adult CPR on her infant son.<\/p>\n

First responders could not save him.<\/p>\n

Police officers arrested her on capital murder charges and took her to the city jail. She said she did not know for weeks that she was charged with murdering her son.<\/p>\n

She said the doctors, nurses and police officers went into a room and decided how their story was going to go. The District Attorney was 25 years old and trying to make a name for himself. He took the jury on a picnic during the trial, she said.<\/p>\n

She was 19 when she was wrongly convicted and was sentenced to die.<\/p>\n

As she was moving from prison intake to death row on her first day in prison, she says a guard told her, \u201cYou will die here!\u201d She cried when they put her in a cell the size of a small bathroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was nothing else to do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Rats, ants and depression found her. She did not have her family, she could not grieve for her son.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know where he was buried, even for two years after I was out,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Finally, she learned as much as she could about the law. She earned her GED and college credits.<\/p>\n

She works with Witness to Innocence because she has a bigger purpose: \u201cTo get the bad guys off the street.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Ajamu\u2019s case, police coerced a purported witness, a 12-year old boy whose mother was fighting ovarian cancer. They kept that boy locked up for eight months, forcing testimony that was the only evidence in a trial that sent Ajamu, then known as Ronnie Bridgeman, his brother Ricky Bridgeman and friend Ricky Jackson to death row.<\/p>\n

The boy tried to recant his statement at the time of the police lineup in 1975 but said that police told him it was too late and forced him to testify, Ajamu said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe boy had parts of four different trials. He gave four different stories. That\u2019s part of how they solidified that it was all lies,\u201d Ajamu said.<\/p>\n

When that boy grew into a man, his pastor convinced him to go public.<\/p>\n

Even in innocence, trials don\u2019t end<\/p>\n

Even free and exonerated, prison leaves a long shadow over their lives.<\/p>\n

Butler-Smith walked around from 1995 to 2005 without a job.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have two applicants. One has a prison record and one doesn\u2019t, who are you going to hire?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n

Her son was buried in the woods. She says she\u2019s fighting with the state of Mississippi to have him moved and buried properly.<\/p>\n

Drinkard received no compensation from Alabama. Alabama says he has to bring the real perpetrator to justice to get compensation.<\/p>\n

Ajamu said Ohio paid him $51,000 a year for every year he was incarcerated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t have a problem taking their freedom away. They took from her and from him the very same things they took from me,\u201d he said gesturing toward Drinkard and Butler-Smith.<\/p>\n

Ajamu, now 61, said to the Monday night crowd in Eagle that he\u2019s \u201cecstatic to be here.\u201d<\/p>\n

He worked through the system and was paroled. He did his own work to clear his name. Kyle Swenson, an investigative reporter with Cleveland Scene magazine, broke the story that helped get Ajamu a new trial. In November 2014, Judge Richard McMonagle granted new trials for Ricky Jackson and Wiley Bridgeman and vacated their convictions. The prosecution then dismissed the charges against both of them and they were released.<\/p>\n

A month later, Ajamu\u2019s conviction was vacated and the prosecution dismissed the charges against him. He was exonerated after 39 years.<\/p>\n

He looked at the law enforcement officers gathered from around the region for Monday\u2019s panel discussion, and smiled as he admitted he wanted to be a police officer when he was young.<\/p>\n

\u201cHope did not find me in a prison cell. The only race on this earth is the human race. We are all human beings made from the same mold. It didn\u2019t break. Someone just forgot about us,\u201d Ajamu said.<\/p>\n

The work goes on<\/p>\n

Witness to Innocence says in the modern era of the U.S. death penalty, there has been one exoneration for every nine executions.<\/p>\n

In July 1976, false forensic testimony and an eyewitness identification manipulated by police misconduct sent Charles Ray Finch to North Carolina\u2019s death row. In June he became the 166th person released and officially exonerated after 43 years in prison.<\/p>\n

He left prison in a wheelchair.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gary Drinkard was on pain pills and muscle relaxers when he was arrested for robbery and murder. His half-sister and her common-law husband were granted immunity if they testified against him. He was acquitted and exonerated after being wrongly convicted and imprisoned.Witness To Innocence | Special to the Daily EAGLE \u2014 Kwame Ajamu was just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2447781","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-25 11:26:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2447781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447781\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2447781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2447781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2447781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}