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Witness to Innocence: Speaker Bio RAY KRONE Ray Krone grew up near York, Pennsylvania, with a loving family and many friends. A He was living a normal life until 1991, when Kim Ancona was murdered in a Phoenix bar where Ray was an occasional customer. His world was then turned upside down. Ray refused to believe that our legal system would convict him. He told his parents not to worry. When faced with the choice of selling his house to pay for a lawyer, he opted to be represented by a public defender instead. “I was thinking, ‘Why should I sell my house when they’re going to know it’s not me as soon as they investigate?’ ” But Ray was convicted, based largely on circumstantial evidence and the testimony of an “expert” witness who asserted that bite marks found on the victim matched Ray’s teeth. In 1992, he was sentenced to death. He refused to give up, though, and continued to fight through the appeals process. In 1994, Ray was granted a retrial. Based on the same evidence, he was again convicted. The judge in the case believed that the evidence was weak, and though he stopped short of throwing out the conviction, he sentenced Ray to 46 years in prison. At the age of 35, he was essentially facing a life sentence. Ray had been on death row for two years and eight months. During that time, the state of Arizona executed three other men. His appeals continued, though. In the spring of 2002, with the help of attorney Alan Simpson, he was able to convince an appeals court that DNA found at the murder scene pointed not to him but to another man, Kenneth Phillips. When prosecutors dropped the charges that April, Ray became the 100th person exonerated from death row in the United States since 1973. He had missed out on life in the 10 years and four months he was imprisoned. He had never surfed the Internet, didn’t know how to use a cell phone and had never heard of gel deodorant. Ironically, though, in some ways Ray was lucky. Unlike nearly every other prisoner on death row, he had financial support, from his second cousin, Jim Rix, who spent more than $100,000 of his own money for Ray’s legal fees. Ray also had the benefit of DNA evidence, which is available in only about 15 percent of cases. Today, Ray works to avoid bitterness about his experience. “I have the ability to be angry, but I’ve tried to avoid the anger,” he says. “I sat in prison all that time, and I watched people who were so bitter and angry that they became victims. At some point you’ve got to take control of your life and rise above things. I hope I won’t ever get to the point where I am so overwhelmed with grief and tragedy that I would actually give in.” Now 49, he spends time with friends and family, and devotes his life to improving the criminal justice system that failed him. He has traveled throughout the United States and Europe, telling his story to audiences that invariably are profoundly moved by the ordeal he survived. Ray has spoken to hundreds of groups, including numerous universities and law schools across the country, as well as to state legislatures and governmental bodies in England, Sweden, Italy and France. He has been featured in numerous publications and on many radio and television programs, including People and Parade magazines, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and Good Morning America. Ray serves as director of communications and training for Witness to Innocence, an “I would not trust the state to execute a person for committing a crime against another person,” he says. “I know how the system works. I know what prison is like, I know what the judges are like, I know what the prosecutors are like. It’s not about justice or fairness or equality. It’s absolutely wrong. Any chance I can, whether I start with one or two people or a whole auditorium filled with people, I’ll tell them what happened to me. Because if it happened to me, it can happen to anyone.”
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