Ron Keine was convicted of the kidnapping, murder, rape and mutilation of University of New Mexico student William Velten in 1974. He was sentenced to death in New Mexico. He was innocent.
Imagine sitting on death row for a crime you didn't commit.
Ron Keine does not have to imagine. He lived it.
Keine, an assistant director for Witness to Innocence, told his story of being convicted then exonerated for murder to more than 100 audience members Feb. 20 at Ethical Society Mid Rivers' weekly meeting at the University of Missouri Extension Center in St. Peters.
Keine, back when he was convicted, was a college student in Detroit. He decided to tour the country on a motorcycle with his friend Doc after being inspired by the 1969 movie "Easy Rider." Keine and Doc joined an infamous California motorcycle gang Keine described as "a drinking club with a motorcycle problem."
In 1974, Keine, Doc and three friends had borrowed a van for a trip home when they were stopped and harassed by police in Oklahoma. They were arrested and charged with armed robbery of a gas station, which had burned down two years prior. But before Keine and his friends were set free, they were told they had to be extradited to New Mexico and were being charged with the Albuquerque murder of college student William Velten.
Once in New Mexico, Keine's court-appointed public defender advised Keine and his cohorts to plead guilty so they would only get life in prison. Keine pleaded not guilty and was taken immediately from the arraignment to death row, where he sat for two months awaiting trial.
At the trial, the prosecutor presented the testimony of a motel maid who claimed to have seen the men carry out the murder. Police, however, had found no evidence in the van the men were riding in or on their pocket knives, according to Keine. Keine asked his public defender several times to object to the evidence, but to no avail. He was convicted and sent to death row.
Keine said at that moment his "whole value system slammed down on you. Everything you believed about the law, the honesty, the ethics of it, out the window."
Keine stayed on death row awaiting his execution for two years, until a former police officer, Kerry Lee, confessed the murder to the pastor of a church. Keine was notified of his retrial nine days before his scheduled execution and was freed in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Keine, who has told his story on CNN's "Larry King Live" and appeared in a Spanish soft drink commercial highlighting death row exonerees, cites many instances of prosecutorial misconduct in his case.
"If you have ethics and they are for sale, you don't have ethics," Keine said. "I can't stop the death penalty, but we can."
Mary Holtmeier, an 11th-grader from St. Francis-Borgia High School in Washington, Mo., was in attendance with several classmates from her Theology 3 course.
"It was interesting how they could do that to innocent people," Holtmeier said.
Keine's story wasn't so shocking to others.
"I wasn't surprised since I know the facts (about the death penalty), but what an amazing man that he made something positive out of this," said Carole Mulliken, a member of Ethical Society Mid Rivers.
Since 1973, 138 death row inmates have been exonerated in the U.S. Thirty-five states have the death penalty. The Illinois Legislature is awaiting a signature from Gov. Pat Quinn that would abolish the death penalty in that state.