Filed under: Announcement, Political Prisoners, Repression
Update on Lucasville Uprising survivor and prisoner, Kieth LaMar.
“An execution date should not be scheduled because Mr LaMar’s death sentence is precisely the sort identified by the Joint Task Force to Review the Administration of Ohio’s Death Penalty. Mr LaMar’s conviction rests on prisoner testimony which is not independently corroborated; there is no physical or video evidence linking him to the crimes and he has always maintained his innocence. Evidence supporting Mr LaMar’s innocence is slowly coming to light after dogged efforts to unearth such proof following years of suppression.” -excerpt from motion.
Keith LaMar’s attorneys filed this response to prosecutor Mark Piepmeier’s motion requesting an execution date. Piepmeier was lead attorney on the Lucasville Uprising cases, and largely responsible for egregious misconduct and deal-making that secured these convictions based on informant testimony and withheld evidence. He has a documented pattern of doing the same to other defendants.
Reading this portion of the document, which describes violent events occurring in the first hours and days of the uprising, a few things may become clear. First, the State of Ohio has no idea what actually happened during the uprising. One of Piepmeier’s accomplice prosecutors even admits this in an interview for D Jones’ documentary film, The Shadow of Lucasville. Second, the rank injustice of the US criminal legal system is unconscionable. This case has exhausted its appeals and is reaching an execution date, which means the highest courts have found such evidence inadequate to win a new trial, or impermissible for them to even hear. Such a system must be unconcerned with justice, and motivated by inferior drives.
This is why we call for amnesty, for recognizing that the state was ultimately responsible for the deaths that occurred at their “maximum security” prison in April of 1993. No more blood should be shed, lives taken or freedom denied in Ohio’s futile effort to scapegoat prisoners for the ODRC’s inability to keep peace, let alone rehabilitate or correct anyone in their prisons.