Jan 2912 min read
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Innocent on Death Row
Free Rob Will
Innocent on Death Row
"On top of considerable evidence supporting Will's innocence and the important errors in the trial court, there must also be addressed the absence of eyewitness testimony or strongly probative forensic evidence ... only circumstancial evidence supports Will's conviction and death sentence."
- U.S. Federal District Judge, 2012
About Rob Will
Rob is a 41 year old innocent person on Death Row. He is set to be executed by the state of Texas for a crime he didn’t commit. He is an artist, poet, published writer and a deeply spiritual man, with an integrated practice of yoga and meditation. Despite the depravity of inhumane conditions he has endured, Rob has taken this opportunity to not only better himself but the lives of those he is incarcerated with.
Contact Us
For any enquiries about the Free Rob Will campaign, please submit a contact form.
Rob does not have access to computers, phones or email. To contact him directly please use Securus.com or the address below.
Robert Will #999402
Polunsky Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas
TX 75266-0400
Innocent People on Death Row
The circumstances surrounding Rob’s case are unique, however, his wrongful conviction is unfortunately not as unique as some would think. There is a staggering amount of innocent people on death row throughout America; some of these cases have been solved and some have yet to be solved and/or may never be vindicated.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, “The death penalty carries the inherent risk of executing an innocent person. Since 1973, more than 167 people who had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in the U.S. have been exonerated.”
The frightening reality about wrongly convicting and sentencing someone to capital punishment is, humans are fallible. The chances a jury will get the verdict right 100% of the time, despite all the reasons behind the causes of wrongful convictions, is an impossible thing to expect. According to the Innocence Project, the top four reasons innocent people are on death row are: (1) eyewitness misidentification, (2) unvalidated/improper forensics or junk science, (3) false confessions, and (4) informants/snitches. Each individual case is typically bound to have more than one of these reasons, among others not listed, be the reason they are wrongfully convicted and the reason so many innocent people are on death row in America.
If the death penalty exists, innocent people will continue to be executed. With possibly innocent people such as Carlos DeLuna, Cameron Todd Willingham, and Robert Pruett, to name a few, having been executed – it is clear that the appeals process Texas has instilled in their court system does not work. The appeals process largely focuses on legal errors, not on facts surrounding the person’s actual innocence. This makes it almost impossible to catch all the mistakes made during the process of a person’s arrest, trial, conviction and death sentence. For example, if a person was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death– thanks to the Anti- Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act 1996- they are heavily restricted in their appeals regardless of how much evidence points to their actual innocence. This is a real problem for many innocent people on death row, Rob included, since many of their appelate attorneys did not do a sufficient enough job in their appeals.
The use of the death penalty has largely declined throughout America since the spike in 1999 of 98 total executions and a decrease to 2019 of 22 executions. The issue is continuing to gain attention and concern of American’s as less and less death sentences continue to be imposed by the states, resulting in fewer innocent people being sent to death row.
The Founder/CEO Lava Records, Innocence Project Founding Board Member & Host of Wrongful Conviction Podcast, Jason Flom, had this to say about the world’s prison population and innocent people on death row:
“With just 4.4% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prison population, the U.S. locks up more of its own people per capita than any country in the history of the world.
33% of the world’s women prisoners are incarcerated in the United States of America. The U.S. locks up black people at six times the rate of South Africa during apartheid.
The U.S. is the only Western country that still has the death penalty. “Best” estimates are that 10% of all executions were people who were actually innocent.”
So, the question remains, how many innocent lives are worth sacrificing to continue capital punishment in America? Will we ever know how many innocent people on death row there truly are?
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