CINCINNATI — Derrick Jamison sat on death row for 20 years. The isolation was traumatizing.
"I was sentenced to die in Thomas Crush’s courtroom," Jamison said. "It was October 25, 1985. I was 24 years old, I should have been on my way to college. I was on my way to death row."
He avoided being executed several times.
"I had six stays of execution, can you imagine having one stay? They came to my cell six times to ask me where did I want my body sent and what did I want for my last meal," he said.
He got his sixth stay 90 minutes before he was scheduled to be executed.
Jamison was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a Cincinnati bartender, but he didn’t commit the crime. A new attorney found exculpatory evidence that had been withheld from his defense team and he was exonerated in 2005.
"It costs me so much, so much pain being in there, you know, I wasn’t supposed to be there," Jamison said.
Derrick Jamison was convicted of murdering a Cincinnati bartender in 1985. He was exonerated 20 years later. He moved back to the Queen City this week to share his story with fellow Ohioans and advocate to abolish the death penalty. @WCPO pic.twitter.com/XIqvLJpYMj
— Jessica Hart WCPO (@JessicaHartTV) March 21, 2023
Pierce Reed with the Ohio Innocence Project said 104 people have been exonerated in Ohio since 1989. Less than a dozen of those exonerations were from people sitting on death row.
"The best estimates nationally are that between 2-5% of people on death row are innocent, but we know in Ohio is that since 1976 there have been 58 executions ... there have also been 11 exonerations from Ohio’s death row, so that’s well beyond that 2-5%. It’s really closer to be 15 or 16%,” Reed said.
Reed didn’t work on Jamison’s case, but he knows what happened to him.
"He tried twice to appeal his conviction and both times were unsuccessful," he said.
A federal district court judge overturned Jamison’s conviction and order a new trial on the grounds that he was denied a fair trial. The district attorney decided not to retry the case and the charges were officially dropped in 2005.
"What we know is his conviction was thrown out, and he is not guilty of the crime he was convicted of, he had nothing to do with it and why that has not equated itself to compensation, I can’t answer the question," said Abraham Bonowitz with Death Penalty Action.
Bonowitz has been friends with Jamison for years. He helped Jamison move from Florida back home to Cincinnati this week. After living in the sunshine state for 4.5 years, Jamison wanted to come home to work on something close to his heart.
"I think we’re really close to ending the death penalty here in the state of Ohio and that’s why I came back," Jamison said.
He’s been working to end the death penalty since his release.
Death Penalty Action
"I’ve been working with Ohioans to stop executions, Death Penalty Action, and witness to innocence, and I’ve been doing this work all over the county, all over the world, trying to end the death penalty especially here in Ohio," he said.
Bonowitz thinks 2023 could be the year Ohio abolishes the death penalty. He said the legislation is expected to be introduced soon.
"Bipartisan sponsored legislation both in the House and the Senate. It is expected to be introduced into one of those bodies in the next week or two," he said.
He and a handful of others are now working to help Jamison find a place to live in Cincinnati, so he can finally have some stability.
"The struggles [of] not being able to have a job and having nothing in the bank, getting no apology and no compensation upon being exonerated and freed we wanted to figure out how to bring the community together around him to help him get to a place where he can be comfortable," he said.
Jamison plans on spending the rest of his days sharing his story and calling on state leaders to get rid of the death penalty, but he needs some help.
Currently, Jamison is staying in a motel. He hopes to find a permanent home soon. To help him, click here.
