Former inmate against executions

ST. LOUIS -- Once convinced the death penalty might be appropriate in some cases, Joseph Amrine now is strongly against it -- in all circumstances.

His 26 years behind bars, including 17 years on Missouri's death row before being freed last month, went a long way in changing his mind. He plans to sue the state for damages over the years he spent under a death sentence.

"Once I came on death row, it seemed that there were just too many outside factors that played a part in people getting the death penalty," said Amrine, 46 and now living with his brother in Kansas City. "Now, I'm totally against it, even for terrorism."

In April, the Missouri Supreme Court overturned Amrine's conviction and death sentence for the 1985 stabbing death of fellow prison inmate Gary Barber of St. Louis -- a crime Amrine and his supporters said he didn't commit. But Amrine had remained in a county jail pending a possible retrial. On July 28, Cole County's prosecutor said he would not retry Amrine, allowing him to be released from prison.

He is the third man in state history to be cleared of a death penalty conviction.

Amrine was sentenced to death in 1986 after being convicted of killing Barber at 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 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 said he had planned to choose bread and water for his last meal as his way letting "the public know how heinous the execution was."

Missouri has executed 60 inmates since 1989, when the state revived the death penalty. Sixty-four prisoners are on Missouri's death row.

After the Supreme Court ordered Missouri to decide whether to retry him or set him free, Amrine said he started doing something he hadn't done before -- marking a calendar.

Amrine's freedom, he says, "is like a dream come true."

These days, Amrine says, he's getting reacquainted with relatives -- including a son, now 28 -- and working part-time at the Kansas City office of his appellate lawyer, Sean O'Brien.

"I feel I've got to slowly wean myself from the prison life," he said. "I have to slowly back up. I'm doing good at that; I think so.

"Hopefully, a year from now, two years from now, I'll be involved in the anti-death penalty movement," he said.