A man who spent nearly two decades on death row for a crime he didn’t commit will speak in North Platte next month. Curtis McCarty will share his story at Saint Patrick’s Catholic Church May 19.
The presentation is free and open to the public. Seats are expected to fill up fast.
Nebraskans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, an organization that supports efforts to abolish the death penalty in the state, will sponsor McCarty’s visit. Despite that, his presentation is expected to be unbiased.
“His talk is about his own personal experiences,” Effie Caldarola, field organizer, said. “He’s not confrontational about what we should do in Nebraska because he’s not from Nebraska. He talks about the conditions he experienced on death row and what it was like to get out of prison.”
According to the Innocence Project, which assists prisoners who could be proven innocent through DNA testing, more than 300 people in the U.S. have been exonerated by DNA testing. That includes 18 on death row.
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McCarty was one of them. He was convicted twice and sentenced to death three times. McCarty was acquitted after serving 21 years in prison, 19 of which were on death row, for a murder he didn’t commit.
On Dec. 10, 1982, Pamela Willis, 18, was found murdered in a home in Oklahoma City. She was naked, stabbed and strangled. McCarty became a suspect because he was an acquaintance of Willis.
However, he wasn’t arrested until 1985. That’s when the forensic analyst working the case changed her notes and said hairs discovered at the crime scene could have been McCarty’s.
The change went undetected until 2000 when the forensic analyst was investigated for fraud in other cases. Unfortunately, by that time it was too late. McCarty had already been sentenced to death.
In 2007, additional testing showed scrapings from the victim’s fingernails did not match McCarty’s DNA. A bloody footprint on the victim’s body wasn’t his either.
He was released May 11, 2007, making him the third person from Oklahoma to be exonerated by DNA testing after serving time on death row. Prosecutors did not appeal the decision.
McCarty’s presentation in North Platte will begin at 7 p.m. He will also speak at 6:30 p.m. May 20 at the First United Methodist Church in Lexington and at 7 p.m. May 21 at Memorial United Methodist Church in McCook.
Caldarola said no RSVPs are necessary.
Curtis McCarty will speak about prison experience
