Transcript of William Nieves and Bud Welsh's Testimony before the State Senate Judiciary Committee on July 8, 2002
(The visits of William Nieves and Bud Welch were sponsored by donations to CADP.)
Q: Would you say your name and who you represent? If anyone? Your testimony, sir:
A: My name is William Nieves. I'm from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Um, I am the 90th person out of the 101 in this country who were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death. I spent six years on Pennsylvania's Death Row, um, with a conviction taken place during the summer of 1994. Um, I was awarded a new trial by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on grounds of ineffective counsel, uh, in preparation for the re-trial which took place on October, uh, October of 2000 at the three week re-trial the jury had found me not guilty on all charges. That is mainly due because the second time around, uh, the strong juries had the opportunity to listen to all of the evidence that was relevant in the, my case. Not only the evidence that the prosecutor felt was relevant to it's case. In 1994, when it decided to withhold exculpatory evidence, eye witness accounts, which would have exonerated me in the first trial back in 1994, as it did in October 2000. I'm here to um, be supportive of the abolition of the death penalty, because I'm of the opinion that the death penalty is a system that is broken. It cannot be fixed. Um, you know, respectively I am offended when I hear individuals say that, "Mr. Nieves, your case exemplifies that the system does work." Those who are of that opinion uh, I would respectively ask for them to sit on Death Row while innocent, Um, for six or ten, fourteen or fifteen years knowing that they're innocent. And then, ask the question to them whether or not, do they feel the system works. Uh, I was not the only one affected by being placed on Death Row. At the time of my first trial, I had a daughter of two years old who had to suffer along with me, during those years I was on Death Row. And I believe that impact on her is, she's still experiencing that. The fact that her father could have been killed by the state, uh, while, uh the prosecutors had evidence that would have exonerated me. You may ask, well, or say that California has a perfect system. Uh, we do not convict and sentence to death innocent people. Well, I remember our former attorney general in Pennsylvania, Ernie Pryha (spelling?), um, when he argued back in 1976 before the United States Supreme Court um, that a perfect system could be put in place, and the United States Supreme Court agreed and reinstated the death penalty in this country. Under the assumption that there would be enough safeguards to prevent innocent people from being convicted and sentenced to death. Well, that same United States Supreme Court, uh, has found itself uh, now realizing uh, that the, you know there are still problems with the death penalty in this country. It has recently ruled that it is unconstitutional to sentence to death the mentally retarded, while during these years we have sentenced to death and executed mentally retarded people, uh, defendant's. And now with this latest ruling which effects the state of Colorado uh, on the unanimity of the jury. You could sit here and you could, um you know, try to create a perfect system, but I'm here to tell you that you will never be able to perfect the death penalty system. You are always going to continue to have human error, and as long as you have the human error in the criminal justice system, you are going to uh, risk, uh, executing the innocent. I mean, I've heard the question, "has there been anybody in Colorado who has been sentenced to death or executed?" I don't know the answer to that, but I know that in this country there are now 101 individuals who have been released from Death Row because of their innocence. And, uh, some of those cases were due to um, the lack of DNA evidence testing. Those individuals who were executed before we started relying on DNA um, I mean, what about those cases, where we executed the defendant? The evidence now shows that these individuals were innocent. Uh, I mean, do we apologize? I believe that as a young kid, my mother used to tell me that if you punched someone in the eye and you were wrong that you can later apologize. But, if you take somebody's life you can never, ever take it back. And so, this is why I'm against the death penalty. Because of the many problems I see with it. And I tell you, you have the power to change that. If you sentence somebody to life in prison without the possibility of parole, and that person sits there twenty, twenty-five years, at least that person has the opportunity to prove his or her innocence. But, if you execute that person and later find that that person is innocent you can never, ever bring that person back. And so, this is why I am against the Death Penalty. Now, uh, I see that you are trying to implement some standards as far as um, um, giving the power to the jury of twelve to make the determination of, for the sentence of either life or death. Well, in my case, it was twelve jurists that sentenced me to death, you see that same jury didn't hear all of the evidence that was relevant in the case. It didn't hear the eyewitness testimony uh, of an eye witness that was a relative of the victim's family. Uh, his testimony exonerated me. I had to wait eight years for that evidence to come forward uh, and it didn't come forward because the prosecutor decided to give it to us. Even during the appeal, while having this evidence in his file, he argued for my execution and um, you know it was a lucky straw, you know, that we were able to discover the identity of this eye witness. And also learn that this eye witness was brought into the courtroom during the first trial uh, secretly brought in, and asked to identify me. This same eye witness told them that I was the wrong person on trial. That I was not the individual who had commited this murder against his friend. And, so, um, you know, I don't know what...whether there are any problems like this with the police departments in this state, and the district attorney's office, but I do believe that there are some who are going to think they are above the law and that they can make that determination before it goes to trial whether a defendant is innocent or guilty. So, in one way that I do support the bill for the twelve jury, but my heart tells me that even with uh, that bill..that alone is not going to prevent innocent people from being executed. And so I just hope that the State of Colorado will take the same courage as the State of Illinois and the State of Maryland and recognize that there is problems with the Death Penalty in this country, and that um, it needs to halt all executions until a study is made and uh, until you have the opportunity to investigate the evidence and to see whether or not uh, you have those problems here in the State of Colorado. So I want to thank you very much for allowing me to tell you about my story, and listening to my opinion on the Death Penalty.
Q: Thank you for coming. I assume, Mr. Nieves, that you support Senate Bill 8, which is Senator Pascoe's bill, that does away with the Death Penalty. Questions? Thank you, I appreciate you being here. Uh, Bud Welch. Welcome Mr. Welch. Would you state your name?
A: Thank you Mr. Chairman. My name is Bud Welch, and I am from Oklahoma City. And, briefly, a little about myself, I spent 37 years running a gasoline station in Oklahoma City. I retired from that this past August. And, uh, I pumped enough gasoline in those 37 years to last me several lifetimes. Um, my only daughter, Julie, was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. And I went through a period the first year of retribution, revenge, uh, heavy drinking, heavy smoking and I look back on that first year now as a period of, best described, as temporary insanity. First of all I didn't even want trials for Terry Nichols or Timothy McVeigh. I could have killed them myself if I had the chance. I finally realized after a year that this revenge and retribution was not going to bring Julie back. There was nothing in it that when we took Timothy McVeigh from his cage, as we did in Indiana last year, to kill him that was going to bring her back or bring me any peace. And, since his death, it has brought actually more grief to me, and more grief to others in Oklahoma City that were looking for release when we killed him on June the 11th. And it did not bring them release. And I'm speaking from the point of the victims family members, of which I know many of them. I'm on the Board of Directors of the Oklahoma City National Memorial, and I stay very close to family members. There are some family members, of McVeigh's death, says that it's okay, but there are many of them that are saying now that it was not the right thing to do. The, the biggest problem we have in this country with the Death Penalty is we, in most all cases, we only kill the easy ones. And by the easy ones, I mean the poor ones. We have 114 on Death Row at MacCallester (spelling?) at this present time, not a single one had to pay for their own defense or appeals. Not a one. The cases like O.J. Simpson out in California, he was a millionaire, had they found him guilty he would not have gone on to San Quinten (spelling?). If that would have been some poor black from South Central, that had been accused of doing the same thing with the same evidence would be on Death Row in San Quinten today. The DePott case in Pennsylvania, a number of years ago. A millionaire that killed a former University of Oklahoma wrestler that worked for him for a number of years, he never went to trial, his case was pled, he's doing his time at the mental institution. If that had been some poor black, or some poor minority from Philadelphia I can assure you that District Attorney Anderson(?) would have them on Death Row at SCI Greeen (?) right today. And the previous speaker mentioned Ernie Pryha (?), the former Attorney General of Pennsylvania that testified for reinstatement of the Death Penalty in 1976. I can tell you that Ernie spends the majority of his time today, and has the last several years trying to abolish the Death Penalty in Pennsylvania. I've testified in front of a City Judiciary committee in Harrisburg, and I might add that I've had the opportunity to speak to, this is my 16th state that I've had the chance to speak. And I appreciate that, I thank you for letting me do it. And uh, I think the problems with the Death Penalty, I think it's been mentioned...101 were wrongly convicted and the system worked, we hear that from time to time. In the State of Illinois, when Governor George Ryan instated a moratorium on the Death Penalty on the morning of January 31st, 2000, that afternoon a reporter from the Chicago Tribune asked Chief Justice Harrison of the Illinois Supreme Court, "Can the Death Penalty be fixed in Illinois?" And Chief Justice Harrison simply said, "No, it can't, because man is fallible." And I think that's...that's the best way to explain why we need to abolish the Death Penalty. They say the system works, but for the 13 that were released from Illinois' Death Row were released due to work journalism students had done from Northwestern University. There's a professor there, um, that got his students involved in checking out Death Row cases. There was one man who was on Death Row for 16 1/2 years, he had an IQ of 58, and it took the journalism students four months not only to find him innocent, but knock on the door of the real killer in Milwaukee. Something the police could not do for 16 1/2 years. The system doesn't work. And we are going to make mistakes. If someone kicks a door down, down the street, and they are picked up, wrongly convicted and sentenced to prison for 14 months that is one thing. But, when you wrongly convict someone, send them to prison and kill them that is something else. That's irreversible. But, I think to bring any kind of peace and serenity to murder victim's family members, that which I'm on the Board of Directors for an organization called Murder Victim's Families for Reconciliation, I've been on that board for three years. We're a national organization based out of Cambridge, Mass., we've got 4,000 members. We'd have thousands more if people knew about us, but so many people don't know anything about us, or that we exist. But, I think, to get back to the sanity in this country we must get rid of this social ill. Just as we ended slavery 140 years ago, women got the right to vote 80 years ago, those are social ills. We did something about integrating schools. And segregation, we are still working on that issue in this country. These are all social ills. A lot of people view the Death Penalty as another social ill, that we in this country will finally (and I look forward to Colorado being one of the leading states to do that) we will finally abolish the Death Penalty and will join all of the rest of the free world in abolishing the Death Penalty. I just testified this past December, in early December before the Duma, in Russia, the equivalent of our Congress, and they are going through the process of removing the Death Penalty from their books. They're the last European country to remove the Death Penalty. It has been de facto abolished in Russia for four years when the high court ruled that the judge can no longer impose the Death Penalty. And they are in the process, at the direction of President Putin, in his words, "we no longer need to be doing God's work. It's time for Russia to once and for all abolish the Death Penalty." And I think it's time for Colorado to once and for all abolish the Death Penalty. Thank you very much.
Q: Thank you Mr. Welch. Thank you. You gratuitously mentioned "poor blacks" on two different occasions.
A: I'm sorry?
Q: You gratuitously mentioned "poor blacks" being the victim of...do you know if there are any poor blacks on Colorado's Death Row today.
A: No sir, I have no idea. It would be my guess that the people on Death Row are probably poor. That would be my guess.
Q: Any other questions?
