Herman Lindsey, a death row exoneree, speaks at the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty meeting Nov. 16, 2024, at the University of Kansas. After Lindsey was exonerated in 2009, he has traveled the country as an advocate to end the death penalty. (Photo by Grace Hills/Kansas Reflector)
LAWRENCE, Kansas — Herman Lindsey knows firsthand how “bad actors” can lead to wrongful convictions in capital murder cases.
After two witnesses who were threatened and promised compensation if they lied testified against him, Lindsey was convicted and sentenced to death. Now exonerated, Lindsey spoke Saturday at the University of Kansas as part of the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty’s annual meeting.
“So, thanks to a lot of good folk like yourself getting involved in this issue, innocent people are actually starting to come out of that bondage,” Lindsey said.
Kansas has not executed a prisoner since 1965, but there are nine inmates on death row. The U.S. Supreme Court halted capital punishment in 1972, then cleared the way for new death penalty laws in 1976. Kansas reinstated the death penalty in 1994.
Lindsey said one of the witnesses in his case was his ex-wife. Detectives threatened her with taking her children away and offered to compensate her with $10,000 if she testified as they directed.
Mark Simms testified in exchange for a shorter sentence that Lindsey had confessed to the murder when they shared a holding cell.
“You got to do what you got to do to free yourself,” Simms, a prisoner who was promised a shorter sentence if he lied, told Lindsey, according to court documents.
12-year hiatus
Lindsey was sentenced to death in 2006 for the 1994 robbery and murder of a pawn shop owner. Lindsey had been to the pawn shop four months before the killing, and detectives interviewed him because they believed Lindsey’s godbrother was connected to the crime. After Lindsey left the interview, he heard nothing from the detectives for 12 years.
In 2006, they told Lindsey he sounded “suspicious” in his initial interview. Lindsey laughed while being arrested, because he knew he was innocent. He was offered a plea deal of three years in prison, which he turned down.
Lindsey’s pawn shop slip was presented as evidence that he’d been planning the murder days before — which Lindsey said he found funny, since the slip was from four months earlier. Lindsey blames an uninterested jury on ignoring this detail.
Lindsey was exonerated by an anonymous ruling from the Florida Supreme Court in 2009. The court found there was no evidence to prove him guilty of a crime.
Lindsey is now executive director of Witness to Innocence, a group of exonerated death row survivors who aim to end the death penalty. Lindsey travels the country to share his story and works closely with the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU wants Lindsey to be the face of its petition for President Joe Biden to “commute all federal death sentences” before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
The annual meeting of the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty followed the ACLU asking a state court to abolish the death penalty in Kansas.
Robert Sanders, a board member for the coalition, said there is potential the ACLU’s challenge to the Kansas law eventually could be heard before the U.S Supreme Court. Sanders said he became less optimistic of “the direction that it may go once it gets to that level” after the election results.
Trump has said he wants to restart federal executions and make more crimes eligible for capital punishment. Trump’s first term oversaw the largest number of federal executions since the late 1800s.
Bipartisan coalition
Sanders said Kansas has come close to ending the death penalty in the past. The coalition’s membership is made up of both Republicans and Democrats, and Sanders said it’s a matter of timing.
“This year we’re talking about being all in, and that’s what we’re asking people to be — all in,” Sanders said.
The conference offered breakout sessions for members to talk about the legality of the death penalty and the new makeup of the Kansas Legislature.
The Gallup Crime Survey from 2023 revealed that for the first time, a majority of Americans believe the death penalty is applied unfairly.
“When I was sentenced to death, the only thing I remember about that time — this is when it gets emotional for me,” Lindsey said. “When I heard, ‘We the people of the state of Florida hereby sentence you to die by lethal injection’ — that is a moment I will never forget.
“Because those particular words stick to me so much, I feel like it’s my job, my obligation, to educate the people.”
This story first appeared in the Kansas Reflector, a member with the Phoenix in the nonprofit States Newsroom.
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