De’Marchoe Carpenter was running out of time.
He’d lost an appeal, Oklahoma’s governor twice denied him parole, and his post-conviction lawyers had just informed him that a key witness died of kidney failure. They were forced to mothball his case. But here Carpenter was, waiting among a flock of prisoners in a penitentiary gymnasium with a heart full of hope.
It was June 2013, and Carpenter and his childhood friend Malcolm Scott had spent 19 years—their entire adult lives—behind bars for a crime they didn’t commit. And the man who did do it, the only man who could corroborate their innocence to a world that seemed to have forgotten them, was scheduled to be executed in six months.
Carpenter stood by as a cluster of inmates browsed a table of children’s books. When their names were called, the men entered a classroom one by one, to be videotaped by a nonprofit that delivers messages to families of the incarcerated. As part of the project, the men read stories aloud to their kids and sent I-love-you’s through the camera.
Dressed in his blue-gray prison smock, Carpenter was nervous but determined. He didn’t pick a paperback this year because this time, he was crafting another message. He locked eyes on the lens and said, “My name is De’Marchoe Carpenter. I’m 36. I have a life sentence plus 170 years for a murder I did not commit.
“The culprits who actually committed this crime is on death row. Two of three has since come forward, but here I am still here,” Carpenter added, before desperately rattling off a list of boldfaced names who might help him: President Obama, Russell Simmons, Oprah Winfrey, Nancy Grace. The video would later be uploaded to YouTube under the title, “Tulsa Man Fights for His Innocence.” It even aired on a local TV station.
The 6-foot-3 inmate secretly made a second video using a cellphone, risking punishment from detention officers. His cellmate recorded the footage, and Carpenter mailed an SD card to his family. “I’m in prison for a murder I didn’t do,” Carpenter pleaded, as the din of male voices crept into the backdrop. “I’ve been in here, trapped like an animal in a cage for a crime I didn’t do.
“Someone please help me.”
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/a-death-row-convict%E2%80%99s-final-words-set-two-innocent-men-free/ar-BBElWWl?li=BBnb7Kz
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Please watch: “Confessions of a Former Rampart CRASH Officer – Fresh Out: Life After The Penitentiary”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdWStRS4zv4
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