Missouri death row inmate released from prison
State's Supreme Court ruled lack of credible evidence
July 29, 2003 www.cnn.com
JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri (AP) -- A former death row inmate walked out of jail Monday after a prosecutor said there was not enough evidence to retry him in the stabbing death of a fellow inmate.
Joseph Amrine, 46, wearing a green shirt and khaki pants, carried two garbage bags of belongings as he left the jail to cheers from a handful of supporters.
"I feel good," he said. "It took 18 years to win this battle."
The Missouri Supreme Court ruled April 29 that there was an absence of credible evidence against Amrine for the 1985 killing, and he was initially scheduled to leave the Potosi Correctional Center on June 16.
Four days before his scheduled release, prosecutor Bill Tackett had him brought to Jefferson City to face an amended murder charge.
Tackett cited blood samples from the clothing Amrine wore the day of Gary Barber's death as the reason for the amended charges.
However, DNA tests on two blood samples from Amrine's trousers were inconclusive because there wasn't enough usable DNA, he said Monday.
After arriving home Monday night in Kansas City, Amrine was greeted by several family members. He later met with reporters at a church.
"It's not like I imagined it," Amrine said. "Family-wise it is, but the publicity, I didn't imagine that. But it's good to have it."
His attorney, Sean O'Brien, said, "It's been a long time and we worked harder than we should have had to exonerate somebody."
Amrine was sentenced to death in 1986 after being convicted of killing Barber when both were inmates in the state prison in Jefferson City.
Key testimony against Amrine came from three former inmates, all of whom later recanted. Six other prisoners testified at Amrine's murder trial that he was playing cards elsewhere in the prison when Barber was stabbed.
Amrine had been in the Jefferson City penitentiary for robbery, burglary and forgery and would have been released in 1992. Barber, formerly of St. Louis, was imprisoned for burglary, auto theft and stealing.
Man on Pennsylvania death row is innocent, attorney claims
In a separate case in Pennsylvania, a defense attorney said Monday that DNA evidence proves a man on death row since 1983 for rape and murder is innocent.
Attorney Christina Swarns said Nicholas James Yarris, 42, was convicted based on blood evidence now proven unreliable, a confession he contends he did not make and erroneous witness testimony that put him at the scene of the crime.
Delaware County District Attorney G. Michael Green's office said it would review the tests.
A jury convicted Yarris in July 1982 of first-degree murder, rape, kidnapping and robbery. Prosecutors had argued that the victim, Linda Mae Craig, 32, resembled a girlfriend of Yarris who had jilted him. Top