For Immediate Release: March 24, 2007

Contact: Annette Barnette
Public Relations & Marketing Director
Glenville State College
Glenville, West Virginia
(304) 462-4115

Glenville, WV – The Glenville State College Criminal Justice program is presenting a panel discussion called ‘Innocence and the Death Penalty.’ The event will take place on Wednesday, April 2, 2008, at 1:00 p.m. and again at 6:00 p.m. in the Heflin Administration Building Presidents Auditorium. The guest speakers will be Greg Wilhoit, who spent five years on death row, Ron Keine, who spent two years on death row, and Rob Warden, an Executive Director of a center on wrongful convictions. The public is welcome to attend. For more information, contact GSC Criminal Justice Associate Professor Dr. Karen Miller at (304) 462-7361x7275. The following is information about the guest speakers.

Greg Wilhoit grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the second of three children, in an average, middle-class class, Christian family. He was a Boy Scout, played sports, and was in the bell choir at church. He attended the University of Oklahoma but left his sophomore year to pursue a career as a journeyman ironworker. He loved being an ironworker and contributed to many of Tulsa’s most impressive structures. He owned his own home and was leading a comfortable life. In 1983, he married Kathy Godwin. They had two daughters, Kristen and Kimberly. Greg loved his family, but in May 1985 he and Kathy separated to try to work out some problems. Kathy, Krissy, and Kim moved into an apartment across town but Greg saw them almost daily. On June 1, 1985, Kathy was found brutally murdered in her apartment. Greg was home alone sleeping so he had no alibi, but he could never dream that anyone would think that he had anything to do with Kathy’s death. Almost a year later, Greg was stunned when he was arrested and charged with Kathy’s murder. The prosecution’s case was based on the statements of two dental experts, one of whom had been out of dental school less than a year, who said that a bite mark found on Kathy’s body matched Greg’s teeth. Greg’s parents hired two well-known Tulsa defense attorneys who spent a year on the case but never looked at the evidence, talked to any witnesses, or tried to find another expert to examine the bite mark. They tried to get Greg to accept a plea bargain, which he refused to do. As Greg said, “They couldn’t grasp the concept that if you’re innocent, you don’t plead guilty.” Three weeks before Greg’s trial was scheduled to start, he fired those attorneys and hired another lawyer who was known as one of the top defense attorneys in the state. Unbeknownst to Greg or his parents, that attorney had become an alcoholic and had developed alcohol-related brain damage. He did no preparation whatsoever for Greg’s trial. He appeared in court drunk, threw up in the judge’s chambers, and literally put on no defense. Since the jury basically heard only the prosecution’s case, Greg was found guilty and sentenced to death. At the sentencing, Greg said, “The judge told me I was to die by lethal injection. He said if that fails, we’ll electrocute you. If the power goes out, we’ll hang you, and if the rope breaks, we’ll take you out back and shoot you.” Greg was sent to death row, which he thought would be the last home he would ever know. He was assigned an attorney, Mark Barrett, from the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System to handle his appeal. Barrett was convinced of Greg’s innocence and worked tirelessly for more than four years to help correct a terrible wrong. The top twelve forensic odontologists in the country examined the bite mark evidence, and all twelve testified that the bite mark could not possibly be Greg’s. A new trial was eventually granted, and Greg was out on bail for two years with the nightmare he was living hanging over his head while the district attorney decided whether or not to retry the case. A second trial was held in 1993, but after the prosecution presented its case, without the bite mark evidence, which had been disqualified, the judge issued a directed verdict of innocence and Greg was cleared of all charges. Greg currently lives in Sacramento, California. He lost eight years of his life, his livelihood, the opportunity to raise his two daughters, and he suffered health problems from his experience. Despite the challenges he continues to face, Greg is moving forward with his life. He has found that sharing his story about the horrors of the death penalty and the fallibility of the justice system gives him a purpose.

Ron Keine and three co-defendants were convicted of the murder, kidnapping, sodomy, and rape of University of New Mexico student William Velten in 1974. He was sentenced to die in New Mexico’s gas chamber. At the time of the murder, Ron was traveling through New Mexico with a motorcycle gang from California. “We were pretty rowdy,” he said, “We were having fun and drinking beer, but we weren’t killers.” Throughout the trial, Ron maintained his innocence. He was unable to believe that he might be found guilty. “I didn't think they could convict four innocent men and sentence them to death,” he says. “I had faith in the American justice system. Now I know it's corrupt and broken. I don't believe the government should kill people.” An investigation by The Detroit News after Ron and his co-defendants were sentenced uncovered lies by the prosecution’s star witness, perjured identification given under police pressure, and the use of poorly administered lie detector tests. Ron spent 22 months on death row until the real killer came forward and confessed. At one point, Ron says that he was so close to going to the gas chamber that an assistant warden came to talk to him about what he wanted for his last meal. In late 1975, a state district judge dismissed the original indictments and the four men were released in 1976 after the murder weapon was traced to a drifter from South Carolina who admitted to the killing. The murder weapon, a 22 pistol, was found only after a search warrant was issued to open the sheriff's safe. Not only was the murder weapon found, there was also dated evidence showing that the gun was hidden from the defense at the original trial. After his release, Ron returned to Michigan, where he became a successful businessman and became active in local politics. At one point, Ron held seven elected and appointed positions. His transition, however, was not easy. “It was hard to find a job,” Ron said, “I found that people read the headlines but don’t read the whole story. All they knew is that I’d been ‘involved’ in a murder. I had employers tell me they couldn't hire me because I'd be bad for employee morale and scare the women,” he said. Ron currently lives outside of Detroit, where he owns his own business. He speaks to groups throughout the country about having survived death row and has done numerous media interviews about his wrongful conviction and the criminal justice system. Ron has been on the Larry King Show, various radio talk shows, and in a PBS documentary highlighting a speech he gave at Bluffton University. Ron is a dynamic speaker who frequently takes his audience on an emotional roller coaster ride with a high-impact mixture of sadness and humor.

Rob Warden is an award winning legal affairs journalist who, as editor and publisher of Chicago Lawyer magazine during the 1980's, exposed more than a score of wrongful convictions in Illinois, including cases in which six innocent men had been sentenced to death. Before founding Chicago Lawyer in 1978, Warden was an investigative reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor at the Chicago Daily News. Since the Chicago Lawyer changed ownership in 1989, Mr. Warden has worked as a political issues consultant, executive officer of the Cook County State’s Attorney's Office, and consultant to various law firms and the litigation department of General Electric Medical Systems. Warden is the author or co-author of hundreds of articles and five books, including two books about wrongful convictions written in collaboration with Northwestern University Journalism Professor David Protess - A Promise of Justice - (Hyperion, 1998) and Gone in the Night (Delacorte, 1993). Warden has won more than fifty journalism awards including the Medill School of Journalism’s John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism, two American Civil Liberties Union James McGuire Awards, five Peter Lisagor Awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Norval Morris Award from the Illinois Academy of Criminology.