Death row inmate won't be retried; released from jail

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- A former death row inmate walked out of jail Monday after a prosecutor said there was not enough evidence to retry him for a prison slaying that happened nearly two decades ago.

Joseph Amrine, wearing a green shirt and khaki pants, carried two garbage bags of belongings as he left the Cole County jail to cheers from a handful of supporters. His release came shortly after prosecutor Bill Tackett announced he would not retry Amrine for the 1985 stabbing death of inmate Gary Barber.

"I feel good," said Amrine, 46, of Kansas City. "It took 18 years to win this battle."

Amrine said he was angry over his long incarceration. "I've got a hard road to travel," said Amrine, adding that the most difficult part of his ordeal was "not giving up."

After his release, while on the way home to Kansas City, he stopped at Shakespeare's Pizza in Columbia with his attorneys and some of the college students who worked on his case.

Amrine later made a brief stop at a relative's home before meeting a throng of family members and well-wishers at a church in Kansas City. Amrine's son, whom he had last seen as a toddler, stood near his father and a young niece crawled into his lap as he spoke with reporters. His fifth-grade teacher was there, as were Amrine's attorneys and their children.

Amrine told the crowd he planned to stay with family and perhaps become a paralegal. "I know all about the law," he said, drawing laughs from the crowd.

'Keep hope alive'

Amrine's attorney, Sean O'Brien, said Amrine has known all the inmates put to death in Missouri since the death penalty was reinstated in the state. Asked what he would tell others on death row, Amrine said, "Keep hope alive. Keep working on your cases."

Another of Amrine's lawyers, civil rights attorney Arthur Benson, said he is in the initial stages of planning a civil case seeking compensation for the years Amrine spent behind bars for the prison killing. Benson said he hoped to file suit by the end of the year.

After the Missouri Supreme Court ruled April 29 that there was an absence of credible evidence against Amrine for the killing, he was scheduled to leave the Potosi Correctional Center on June 16.

But four days before that release, Tackett had him brought to Jefferson City to face an amended murder charge. Tackett cited blood samples from the clothing Amrine wore the day of Barber's death as a reason for additional laboratory testing.

On Monday, Tackett said that DNA tests on two blood samples from Amrine's left pant leg were inconclusive, meaning there was not enough usable DNA to prove that the blood was Barber's.

Asked whether he thought Amrine was guilty, Tackett said that wasn't his job. He said the prosecutor's office was not pursuing any other suspects.

"We were so close to finding out, in my mind, the truth," Tackett said.

O'Brien accompanied Amrine out of the jail. He said the truth about Amrine's innocence had been ignored for years.

"It's been a long time and we worked harder than we should have had to exonerate somebody," O'Brien said.

Cole County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Brown, who had prosecuted Amrine for murder, declined to comment Monday about his release.

Until Tackett raised the blood sample issue, no physical evidence tied Amrine to Barber's death. Tackett initially said that stains on Amrine's clothing appeared to test positive for blood and that DNA tests had never been conducted.

Amrine was sentenced to death in 1986 after being convicted of killing Barber when both were inmates in the state prison in Jefferson City.

Key testimony against Amrine came from three former inmates, all of whom have since recanted. Six other prisoners testified at the murder trial that Amrine had been playing cards elsewhere in the prison when Barber was fatally stabbed.

In the Supreme Court's 4-3 decision throwing out Amrine's conviction and death sentence, Judge Richard Teitelman said Amrine's case "presents the rare circumstance in which no credible evidence remains from the first trial to support the conviction."

The case marked the first time the Missouri Supreme Court had addressed whether a claim of innocence alone -- without any claim of a violation of constitutional rights -- could be heard by the high court as grounds to overturn a conviction and sentence.

Amrine had been in prison for robbery, burglary and forgery and would have been released in 1992. Barber, formerly of St. Louis, was imprisoned for burglary, auto theft and stealing.

Amrine was the subject of a 30-minute documentary -- "Unreasonable Doubt: The Joe Amrine Case" -- produced by a University of Missouri teacher and students.

Amrine's release Monday came as a surprise to some relatives, who weren't expecting a decision until a court hearing scheduled for Aug. 12.

"We're very thrilled," said Amrine's sister-in-law, Debra Amrine. "Words cannot explain the happiness that we're feeling right now."

Missourians To Abolish the Death Penalty said Amrine's case is proof that capital punishment should be abolished nationwide. The group also praised Tackett for his "courageous action."

Missouri has executed 60 people since the state's reinstatement of the death penalty in 1989.