50 cups of coffee and you know it's on

If I said that the VHAC tour is being run on coffee, I'd probably be exaggerating...but only slightly. The only reason it would be an exaggeration is because we've barely had time to stop for coffee. Otherwise, we would.

On Day V today, the Mystery Machine pulled in to Edinboro for a stop at Edinboro University, Meadville to visit Allegheny College, and Erie for a community event. Erie and northwest PA are very important to the campaign for a moratorium on the death penalty in Pennsylvania. With a heavy Catholic population, Erie is fertile ground for building the grass-roots movement. There are also legislators of interest in the region.

Without fail, at every event we've held, someone asks if Harold Wilson received compensation or restitution after his 16+ years on PA's death row after his wrongful conviction. Harold has received nothing. Well, that's not true. He received 65 cents and a bus token and was escorted out the back door of Philadelphia County jail after his acquittal at retrial in November, 2005.

22 states have some form of compensation for exonerated prisoners, but Pennsylvania is not one of them. The Innocence Project considers this a "priority issue."

The Innocence Project is intimately familiar with the tremendous pain and challenges exonerated people encounter after release, and has developed a series of recommendations for states to compensate the wrongly convicted.

The moral and legal obligation to provide compensation
With no money, housing, transportation, health services or insurance, and a criminal record that is rarely cleared despite innocence, the punishment lingers long after an innocent person is exonerated. States have a responsibility to restore innocent people’s lives to the best of their abilities.

The Innocence Project recommends that all states:

* Compensate exonerated people immediately after release with a fixed sum or a range of recovery for each year of wrongful incarceration. Congress and President Bush have recommended that this amount be set at $50,000 per year of wrongful incarceration.
* Provide immediate re-entry funds and access to job training, educational, health and legal services after an innocent person’s release.

Pennsylvania Senate Bill 714 would provide a mechanism for compensating exonerated prisoners. It is not a perfect bill. It would require the exoneree to file a claim in common pleas court, which is not recommended by The Innocence Project. But SB 714 is a step in the right direction. It has eight co-sponsors, including the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

This is fresh in my mind not only because we keep getting that question but also because Harold spent most of the trip tonight from Erie to Pittsburgh telling me about the hardships exonerees face. Much of it was not news, but it is good to have that reminder.

Lorry Post of Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation re-joined the tour today and will be with us for a big day on Thursday in Pittsburgh.

Andy in Harrisburg in Pittsburgh

The Heavy

"At night I could hear the blood in my veins
Black and whispering as the rain
On the streets of Philadelphia."
--Bruce Springsteen

It's been a long time since I spent Good Friday in a church. But I can't think of a better place to have spent Good Friday this year than Broad Street Ministry in Philadelphia. Day II of the Voices of Hope Agents of Change Tour (henceforth, VHAC) took us to BSM.

This unique church is just a few years old, and BSM has made a commitment to social justice. The Reverend Bill Golderer explained at the start of our event that the community is committed to a number of issues, including HIV/AIDS awareness and criminal justice and prison reform. To borrow a phrase from Buddhism, this is a community of Engaged Christians.

It was obvious when we pulled up to the church at 320 South Broad Street that this was a different place. It's an old church building, and there were numerous folks hanging around the front steps, probably people who spend most of their time on the streets- based on the full trash bags some of them were carrying. Within a few minutes, it was obvious that this was also a place that welcomes these folks who are so often ignored and marginalized, as several of them entered the building when the doors opened for us and at least one of them helped us carry in our gear without asking for anything in return. A staff person from the church also knew this man by name.

Lorry Post and Harold Wilson were again our featured speakers. At this event, Lorry had more time to speak than at Drexel, and he went into more detail about the death of his daughter and the experience that he and his wife June had after Lisa's death.

What took my breath away from Lorry's talk was the manner in which Lisa was killed. She was brushing her teeth when her husband stabbed her from behind, twice in the back. The most mundane daily activity turned into her final act, an act of great tragedy.

And Lorry's fist-raising moment came after his discussion of their involvement in trying to stop the execution of Pedro Medina in Florida. After Medina was executed, June Post defiantly told the media, "You haven't heard the last of us." The group in New Jersey led by Lorry and June became Pedro's People, then New Jerseyans for a Death Penalty Moratorium, and then New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. NJADP was the catalyst for repealing capital punishment in New Jersey.

Harold Wilson's talk at BSM was the most emotional of the three he gave in two days in Philadelphia. The setting at BSM added to the mood. The room we were in was lit only by temporary spotlights. The floor was old wood. One of the stained glass windows had a hole in it. The room was ringed by a balcony where old pews were stored, in no particularly organized fashion.

Harold's tale of being railroaded to death row by the Philadelphia District Attorney's office was clear and poignant. The ADA who prosecuted the case used racial profiling in jury selection, several years after SCOTUS outlawed the practice. The DA's office was so brazen about this practice that they produced a training video for new prosecutors.

Harold recounted a bloody footprint from the scene allegedly from the perpetrator. It was several sizes smaller than his own foot size.

At his retrial in 2005, a witness admitted that a jacket from the scene was his and not Harold's, as prosecutors had claimed.

And DNA evidence from that jacket indicated the presence of an unknown person.

The audience at BSM was quite diverse. Old and young. Black and white. And based on appearances, up and down the economic scale. This audience engaged us during the discussion period, and the black audience members, in particular, reminded us of the ways in which racism continues to haunt our society. One woman railed against the recent criticism of Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, saying that church is the one place where African-Americans can speak without a filter.

It was a heavy night. To close, the mood was lightened, but only slightly, by some righteous rock from singer-songwriter John Francis.

If we're going to topple the death penalty in Pennsylvania, it's going to happen because of people like those at Broad Street Ministry.

Andy in Harrisburg

On the road

I haven't been blogging much lately, in part because we have been planning the Voices of Hope, Agents of Change Tour, a statewide odyssey across Pennsylvania with death row survivors and murder victims' families. These voices of experience will topple the death penalty. It's a two week adventure, covering 20 events in 11 towns, and over the course of the two weeks, I plan to post here what we're doing.

Yesterday the tour kicked off in Philadelphia and touched more than 130 people. Over the lunch hour, we stopped at Temple University School of Law for pizza and stories of death row with exoneree Harold Wilson. About 50 law students heard Harold's story of spending 16 years on death row, only to be acquitted at retrial in 2005. At the second trial, DNA evidence from the scene indicated the presence of another person, the likely perpetrator.

I missed the Temple event but made it in time for an event with the National Lawyers Guild chapter at Drexel University School of Law. It was standing room only at Drexel, as nearly 90 people filled the room to hear from Harold and from Lorry Post, Executive Director of Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation. Lorry started his talk in dramatic fashion by holding up a photo of his daughter Lisa, who was killed by her husband in 1988. The man received a 20 year sentence. Lorry went on to talk about his involvement in a Florida case in which a man's head was set on fire during his execution in the electric chair. As Lorry asked, how is that one man who was definitely guilty gets 20 years while another man, who may well have been innocent, gets his head set on fire?

As at Temple, Harold kept the audience's rapt attention.

Throughout the next two weeks, I'll be sharing our adventures and photos from the tour here at SF. Stay tuned. See you in Harrisburg on Monday.

Andy in Harrisburg in Philly