Press Release
For Immediate Release
April 10, 2002
Contact:
Ann Aber
(303) 817-3270, Cell
(303) 499-5902
Citizens Group Calls for a Moratorium in Colorado as 100th Innocent Person is Released from Death Row
2,000 groups call for a moratorium on executions nationwide
DENVER -- On April 8, 2002 Ray Krone became the nation's 100th person to be released from death row after being sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit. In light of this shameful milestone, the statewide organization, Coloradans Against the Death Penalty (CADP), has renewed its call for a moratorium on executions.
Krone served 10 years in Arizona prisons, including 3 years on death row, before DNA evidence proved him innocent of sexually assaulting and killing a cocktail waitress in 1991. Krone's exoneration comes in the midst of heightened national concern about the fairness of the death penalty system.
"One hundred innocent people have almost been executed in this country," said Ann Aber, of CADP. "If this doesn't demonstrate that there are some serious flaws in our system, I don't know what does."
CADP believes that one step toward the abolition of the death penalty is a moratorium on executions. Citing concerns about racial bias, incompetent counsel for poor defendants, geographic disparities, police disparities, police and prosecutorial misconduct, and other problems, CADP believes a moratorium would ensure that no executions of the innocent, the young or those wrongfully convicted due to poverty, racism or lack of procedural fairness, would take place.
Nationwide 2,000 groups have called for a moratorium on executions according to the national Quixote Center, whose Moratorium Now! campaign maintains a National Tally of groups calling for a moratorium. Among the 2,000 are local governments including Atlanta, Cincinnati, Detroit, Philadelphia, Tallahassee, Nashville and San Francisco. The American Bar Association, six state and over a dozen county bar associations, the American Psychological Association, the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, the National Conference of Black Mayors, and most of the nation's religious denominations have also called for a moratorium.
Coloradans Against the Death Penalty is a statewide organization
with about 2,000 concerned citizens including religious
leaders, politicians, lawyers, and family members of murder
victims who say about the death penalty: "Not in my
name." For more information, visit www.coadp.org.
For
more information on the moratorium
movement nationally, contact the Quixote Center's Moratorium
Now! campaign at 301-699-0042 or www.quixote.org/ej.
