By Erin Mathews
The Salina Journal, Kan.
SALINA, Kan. — Before his 2008 release, Darryl Burton spent 24 years locked in Missouri prisons for a murder he didn’t commit. When he came to Salina on Tuesday with representatives of the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, he said his central message was one of hope and forgiveness.
“The story is three parts -- how I got sent to prison, how I had to live in prison and how I got out -- but the message -- don’t miss the message -- is hope and forgiveness, and it will free anybody,” Burton said.
Burton was the keynote speaker at the Salina Regional Abolition Conference at Kansas State University Salina. He and Carolyn Zimmerman, of Topeka, the daughter of a murder victim, participated in rotating workshops for students who hadn’t lived as many years as Burton spent in prison. Burton and Zimmerman discussed their experiences with the judicial system, with handling loss and the reasons they don’t believe Kansas or any state should have a death penalty.
“Survivors face their losses in different ways,” said Zimmerman, whose father, Lawrence Saenz, was stabbed to death in January 1969 at age 54 in Warrensburg, Mo. “I think my father would agree with me that the death penalty is a false promise and bad public policy. The death penalty is the illusion that we can protect life by taking life.”
Mary Sloan, executive director of KCADP, said the coalition will be backing a bill to repeal Kansas’ death penalty in 2015. She urged students at the workshops to contact their legislators. She said more than 100 studies have shown that the death penalty does not deter crime; death penalty cases cost more, and innocent people have been convicted and executed.
Evidence not presented
Burton said he was arrested June 28, 1984, accused of gunning down Donald Ball as he pumped gas in St. Louis on June 4 of that year. He said evidence that Ball had really been killed by a rival drug dealer as part of a turf war was not presented to the jury. The attendant at the gas station who told police they had the wrong man was not called to testify, he said.
“There was no motive, no ballistics, no DNA, no weapon, no confession. Nothing connected me to the crime, except some snitch witnesses who came to court, raised their hands under oath and lied,” he said.
On the basis of testimony offered by two witnesses looking for consideration in their own cases, Burton, who was 23 at the time, was convicted of capital murder and armed criminal action. Although prosecutors did not ultimately seek the death penalty against him, Burton said his 75-year sentence amounted to “death by incarceration.”
Years of anger
Burton said his first 14 years in prison were filled with rage, hatred and anger, which made him fit right in at Missouri State Penitentiary, which Time magazine referred to as the “bloodiest 47 acres in America.” Burton said it wasn’t uncommon to see people stabbed, and he will never forget the screams he would hear echoing from other cells.
“I’ve never heard men scream like I heard them scream in that place -- like it’s coming from deep inside of their soul,” he said. “Hate became an energy and entity inside me and locked me up in a spiritual prison for many years.”
Seeking outside help
Burton said he saw a story on 60 Minutes in 1990 about an organization called Centurion Ministries that had won the release of a woman from a Texas prison after a wrongful conviction, and he wrote the organization a letter. The reply he received was that they were a small, underfunded organization, and if they took his case, it would be 10 years.
He said he would wait and write them letters in the meantime. He also wrote to presidents, senators, governors, Oprah Winfrey and anyone else he could think of who might have the power to change his circumstance.
Seeking help from above
Burton said he had never been a religious man before his arrest, but his grandmother had been devout, and he believes her prayers helped him survive prison.
“I was not a believer, but my grandmother told me, ‘One of these days, son, you’re gonna need Jesus,’ ” he said. By 1998, Burton said, her words “kept on chasing me -- ‘Can’t nobody help you but Jesus’ -- I would hear it in my sleep, in my dreams, sometimes.”
So, Burton said, he sat down and wrote Jesus a letter. He said the letter wasn’t a prayer or a plea, but a challenge.
“Dear Jesus Christ, if you’re real and you know all things, you and I know I’m innocent. If you help me get out of this place, not only will I serve you, but I’ll tell the world about you.”
Since he didn’t have a mailing address, Burton folded up the letter for two days, but then he got rid of it before a guard could find it and think he was crazy, he said.
“Go out in the yard, get in a knife fight -- that’s normal -- but writing letters to God in a place like that?” he said. “That’s not normal.”
Following Jesus’ example
Burton said he accepted Christ in prison and began trying to follow his example by loving his enemies, praying for them and forgiving them.
“I began to pray for those people, but I prayed through clenched teeth -- I’m going to pray for them, but you know what they did to me -- and I kept praying for them, and you know what?” he asked. “It freed me because the forgiveness wasn’t for them, it was for me.”
Burton said he had been carrying hatred for everyone in the judicial system before he started praying for them.
“If you pray for that person day and night, eventually when you start praying you will truly in your heart want what’s best for them,” he said. “I don’t know how it works. I don’t know why it works. I just know it does.”
Evidence leads to exoneration
In 2000, Centurion Ministries, of Preston, N.J., began looking into Burton’s case and uncovered evidence sufficient to eventually exonerate him. At the conclusion of an eight-year legal process, Burton was released by Judge Richard G. Callahan on Aug. 28, 2008.
He said it was difficult to find a job, and one potential employer looking at the 24-year gap in his resumé asked if he was Rip Van Winkle. He ultimately found work with Catholic Charities, helping offenders released from prison adjust to being back in society.
Burton said he is a student at the St. Paul School of Theology and has two semesters of seminary to go. He has a lawsuit for wrongful conviction pending against the St. Louis police.
Spreading his story
He’s been invited to tell his story in Russia, Australia, Africa, Switzerland, Saipan and Japan, and he has been able to accept a few of those invitations. He said he’s traveled much of the United States telling his story.
When he nearly faced the death penalty, Burton said, he didn’t have anywhere near the resources to prove his innocence that the state of Missouri had when they presented a case against him.
“When they put that kind of weight on you, you can’t win,” he said. “If they crucified Jesus, my Messiah, then we mortals don’t stand a chance.”