Relief Urgently Needed for Innocent Man on Ohio's Death Row - Clemency For Kevin Keith

Petition Text:  The State of Ohio is poised to execute Kevin Keith on September 15, 2010, in spite of overwhelming evidence supporting what Mr. Keith has maintained from the time of his arrest – he is actually innocent, wrongfully convicted of a crime based on faulty eyewitness identification.

Mr. Keith has an alibi for the time of the crime supported by four witnesses.

The Ohio Innocence Project, the National Innocence Network, and a group of leading eyewitness and memory experts all support relief for Mr. Keith.

I urgently appeal to the Ohio Parole Board and Governor Ted Strickland to grant clemency to Kevin Keith to prevent the State of Ohio from doing the intolerable: putting a man to death for a crime he did not commit.

The primary evidence against Mr. Keith was the erroneous eyewitness identification of one of the surviving victims of the crime, who identified Mr. Keith in spite of initially telling at least four witnesses that he was unable to identify the perpetrator. This identification of Mr. Keith relied on the very procedures recognized to be unreliable and inaccurate by Governor Strickland and the Ohio Legislature when the State passed into law in April new requirements for eyewitness identification procedures.

New evidence recently uncovered by counsel for Mr. Keith further discredits the identification. Thirteen years after he was convicted, Mr. Keith discovered that one of the State’s supposed “witnesses” – who was critical to corroborating the legitimacy of the eyewitness identification – does not actually exist.

Additional new evidence also implicates an alternative suspect who told a police informant that he was paid to carry out the crime for which Mr. Keith stands to be executed.

No court has ever had the entirety of new evidence before it.

More information on the case can be found at: www.kevinkeith.org.

Mr. Keith has steadfastly maintained his innocence from the time of his arrest and throughout his 16 years on death row. The State of Ohio now risks putting to death an innocent man with no jury ever hearing the entirety of evidence of innocence.

I appeal to the Ohio Parole Board and Governor Strickland to grant clemency to Kevin Keith.

Petition can be found here.

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Iran: Human Rights - 30th Anniversary of the Islamic Revolution

Video by Amnesty International made just prior to the election that provides some background into Human Rights in Iran.

Economic Crisis Reveals Deeper Human Rights Problems

More than six decades of human rights failures by governments have been exacerbated by the world economic crisis, which brought the problems of poverty and inequality to the fore, according to Amnesty International’s Secretary General.

"It’s not just the economy, it’s a human rights crisis: the world is sitting on a social, political and economic time bomb," said Irene Kahn as she launched Amnesty International’s annual report on the state of the world’s human rights.

Billions of people are suffering from insecurity, injustice and indignity around the world. In many cases, the economic crisis made matters worse, with millions more sliding into poverty.

Increased poverty and deprivation have led to denial of economic and social rights – including food shortages and the use of food as a political weapon; forced evictions; abuse of rights of indigenous peoples. Yet human rights problems have been relegated to the backseat as political and business leaders grapple with the economic crisis.

2008 saw massive rises in the price of the most basic of necessities – food – which had the effect of making the poorest people in the world even poorer. People took to the streets across the world and, in many countries, were faced with violent repression.

In Zimbabwe, more than five million people were in need of food aid by the end of 2008, according to the UN. The government has used food as a weapon against its political opponents. Across the country, political opponents, human rights activists and trade union representatives were attacked, abducted, arrested and killed with impunity.

Hundreds of activists protesting against economic decline and social conditions were arrested and detained without charge.

Across Africa, people demonstrated against desperate social and economic situations and sharp rises in living costs. In a taste of what could lie ahead, some demonstrations turned violent; the authorities often repressed protests with excessive force.

Social tensions and economic disparities led to thousands of protests throughout China. In the Americas, social protest at economic conditions increased in Peru; in Chile there were demonstrations throughout 2008 on Indigenous People’s rights and rising living costs.

In the Middle East and North Africa, the economic and social insecurity was highlighted by strikes and protests in several countries, including Egypt. In Tunisia, strikes and protests were put down with force, causing two deaths, many injuries and more than 2,000 prosecutions of alleged organizers, some culminating in long prison sentences.

"The events we’ve seen in 2008, with the world economic crisis at the top, demand a new kind of leadership from world leaders," said Irene Khan. "They must take real action, centred on human rights, to tackle growing poverty around the world, and they must invest in human rights as purposefully as they invest in economic growth."

Read more: Amnesty International Report 2009