By Sarah Schulz
sarah.schulz@theindependent.com

Curtis McCarty was exonerated in May 2007 through DNA evidence and the work of The Innocence Project. According to the organization's Web site, McCarty was convicted twice and sentenced to death three times, based on prosecutorial misconduct and testimony from forensic analyst Joyce Gilchrist.

He was charged in 1985 with the 1982 stabbing and strangling of an 18-year-old woman with whom he was acquainted. Hairs and other biological evidence were collected by police at the scene but were later mishandled by Gilchrist, who was fired in 2001 for fraud and misconduct, according to The Innocence Project.

Gilchrist compared hairs from the crime scene with McCarty's and found they weren't similar. In the three years between the murder and McCarty's arrest, Gilchrist changed her notes to reverse her findings. Attorneys for McCarty didn't discover the change until 2000. She had also testified that McCarty's DNA matched DNA found on the victim's body, which wasn't true, according to The Innocence Project.

McCarty was on death row for two years before Oklahoma's highest court overturned his conviction due to prosecutorial misconduct, improper forensic procedures, and comments Gilchrist made on the stand. He was retried in 1989, with Gilchrist testifying against him and with the same attorney leading the prosecution. He was convicted a second time, according to The Innocence Project.

McCarty is the 124th of 127 death row inmates to be freed since the country's death penalty was reinstated 30 years ago. His release, and the others' as well, came after the emergence of evidence of innocence, according to a press release from Mena Sprague.

Sprague said McCarty's visit to Nebraska is being sponsored by Nebraskans Against the Death Penalty, Central Nebraska Peace Workers and Nebraskans for Peace.

His visits to Grand Island, North Platte, Lincoln and Omaha are due to LB1063, which would replace capital punishment with life in prison without parole, Sprague said. The bill is currently before the Nebraska Legislature and McCarty testified before senators in Lincoln earlier this month.

Sprague said cases such as McCarty's are proof that the country's judicial system isn't perfect and there is a need to preserve human life.

Earlier this month, Nebraska's Supreme Court declared the use of the electric chair to be unconstitutional. Nebraska had been the only state with electrocution as its sole means of execution. State courts can still sentence people to death but there is no way to carry out the penalty.