Priest: Kentucky close to abolishing death penalty | KY Standard.com http://www.kystandard.com/node/127128
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Priest: Kentucky close to abolishing death penalty
Exonerated death row prisoner shares story
By Randy Patrick
Tuesday, September 23, 2014 at 6:07 pm
The Rev. Patrick Delahanty, a longtime leader in the effort to end capital punishment, said Monday he thinks Kentucky may soon
become the first state in the South to do so.
“| have been doing this work now for over 25 years, and | think we're close in Kentucky to
abolishing the death penalty,” he said.
The priest praised the efforts of state Rep. David Floyd, R-Bardstown, to make executions illegal
and urged his listeners to persuade state Sen. J immy Higdon, R-Lebanon, to cosponsor a similar
bill by Democratic Sen. Gerald Neal of Louisville.
Delahanty, executive director for the Catholic Conference of Kentucky and chairman of the
Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, made his remarks at the Basilica of St. } oseph
Proto-Cathedral in Bardstown before introducing a guest speaker, former Alabama death row
inmate Gary Drinkard.
The two were invited by the Rev. Bill Hammer, senior pastor of St. J oseph, for a discussion
sponsored by the church’s Respect Life Committee in cooperation with the state coalition.
Drinkard was convicted in 1995 for the Aug. 18, 1993, robbery and murder of a Decatur, Ala., junk
dealer, Dalton Pace. His conviction was reversed by a jury in 2001 for prosecutorial misconduct
because the state had allowed testimony about his prior criminal record.
RANDY PATRICK/The Kentucky Standard
Former Alabama death row “| wasn’t an angel. | had been in trouble in the past. But | didn’t rob and kill,” said the ex-con who is
inmate Gary Drinkard, who now a spokesman for the Witness to Innocence, an abolition group made up of exonerated former
spoke on capital punishment death row inmates.
Monday night at the Baslica of . . . . . .
St. J oseph Proto-Cathedral, Drinkard was 38 years old when city police raided his rural home looking for marijuana in 1993 and
put a gun to his 9-year-old son's head, he said. He offered to show them where his stash was, but it
soon became clear that the drug search was only a pretense. What they were really looking for was
evidence in a murder.
said he deals with bitterness
about his wrongful conviction
by talking and writing about it.
The former inmate said he used to get high with his half-sister, Beverly, and her common-law
husband, Rex Segars, when they came over to visit, and his children never knew about it. But it was his sister and the boyfriend who
had fingered him for the killing and robbery at Pace’s home.
“There wasn't any good evidence,” Drinkard said. No fingerprints. No matching car tracks. Witnesses’ description of the supposed
getaway car didn’t match. And Drinkard had an alibi. A couple testified that they were at Drinkard’s home the night of the slaying to help
his adopted daughter deliver her Pekinese dog's puppies, and that he was there until they left around 10 p.m. Police believed the killing
happened around 8 that night.
Beverly Segars testified that she secretly recorded him telling her about killing Pace, but the recording was inaudible. A police officer lied
on the witness stand, Drinkard said.
While the state had unlimited resources, his defense was inept, he said.
“They convicted me of capital murder, sentenced me and sent me to death row that day,” he said.
Drinkard said that at the time, his sister and Rex Segars were cocaine addicts. They were going through an ounce of the drug a week,
weren't working, and committed crimes to support their habit.
“More than likely, the real killers were my sister and her boyfriend,” he said.
To this day, “they're walking around” in the same community where the family lived when the crime took place, he said.
In response to a question from the audience, Drinkard said he didn’t know why she blamed him.
“The way | deal with the bitterness is to talk aboutit,” he said. “My own sister and her boyfriend, who was supposed to be my best friend,
put me on death row for something they did. I’m very angry.”
Drinkard talked about what life was like at Holman Correctional Institute, his efforts to get a new trial, and his thoughts on the death
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Priest: Kentucky close to abolishing death penalty | KY Standard.com http://www.kystandard.com/node/127128
penalty.
He said a large number of death penalty cases that are retried are reversed, mostly for prosecutorial misconduct. Some people who
have been sentenced to death have been proven not guilty based on witnesses or DNA evidence, he said. It costs $1.5 million to
execute someone, but $500,000 to keep them on death row for 40 years, he said. Given the fact that most states that have the death
penalty also have the possibility of life without parole, there is no need for such a barbaric practice, he said.
He said the United States and China are the last civilized places on the planet that still execute criminals.
“We're a bloodthirsty country, and the death penalty is nothing but vengeance,” he said.
Only about 15 to 20 people attended the lecture, but after Drinkard’s speech, he and Delahanty fostered a discussion with the audience
about the death penalty and efforts to abolish it.
One of those who commented was Charlotta Norby of Danville, who worked as an attorney for the Southern Center for Human Rights at
the time Drinkard was sentenced
Most of those on death row, Norby said, are not innocent, but “that doesn't necessarily mean they're monsters,” she said.
Killings are usually crimes of passion, Drinkard agreed
Norby said defending clients in capital cases is difficult and seldom successful
“Most of the time you don’t win,” she said. “When you win, your client gets parole ... and when you lose, they kill your client.”
Delahanty said this year Floyd co-sponsored legislation to abolish the death penalty and will do so again.
“His main reasons are religious,” the priest said. “He believes life is sacred.”
There was a time when Floyd supported the death penalty, he said, but his views have evolved.
Delahanty is hopeful there will be bipartisan efforts in both chambers of the state legislature the next time, and he says public opinion is
changing on the issue.
“It’s totally different now than it was five years ago,” he said. “Not everybody's in agreement, but there's a hostility that has disappeared
on this particular issue, and | don’t know how to fully explain that.”
In an email the morning after the meeting, Floyd was in Arizona and regretted that he could not attend. He said ‘the legislature, as a
reflection of the people, will eventually catch up to popular opinion.”
Surveys show, he said, that “a good majority” of Kentuckians prefer life without the possibility of parole to the death penalty.
Delahanty said he and Drinkard were supposed to have met with Higdon prior to the talk, but were delayed and missed the opportunity.
Higdon said Tuesday he admires Floyd's courage in sponsoring the bill, but he isn’t ready to make a commitment and thinks more
discussion is needed. The senator said his constituents are almost evenly divided on the issue. He mentioned that there is currently a
stay on executions in Kentucky while a panel is studying the issue.
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