Ray Krone: Innocence

Ray Krone was the 100^th exoneree since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1973. To date, there have been a total of 140 exonerations.  However, 3,199 people still remain on death row. How many of them are innocent? More importantly, how many of the 1,291 people have we executed since 1976 were innocent? Should we, as human beings, continually risk executing an innocent person?

According to the Innocence Project, there have been 289 post-conviction DNA exonerations (17 served on death row). Someone can be falsely convicted of a crime for a number of reasons, which include but are not limited to, faulty eyewitness identification (misidentification by eyewitnesses was a part of more than 75 percent of the 289 wrongful convictions), false confessions, and ineffective assistance of council.

DNA evidence has proved it can be a monumental tool for post-conviction exonerations. It has provided irrefutable evidence that sometimes the system that we hold in such a high regard is wrong, and that someone can be wrongfully convicted of a crime they didn’t commit.

Ray Krone was convicted of a crime he did not commit twice. It wasn’t until a judge granted him the right to have DNA from the victim’s clothing tested that the doorway to Ray’s freedom opened.