By Tracy Overstreet
tracy.overstreet@theindependent.com

That was all before he spent 22 years in prison 19 years on death row in Oklahoma for a crime he did not commit.

"If I sound bitter I am. I'm angry to this day," McCarty, 45, said in patient, deliberate statements made Sunday in Gollaher Chapel at Trinity United Methodist Church.

He was freed from death row in May 2007 after DNA evidence revealed the truth he had not stabbed and strangled 18-year-old Pamela Willis, the daughter of an Oklahoma police officer, in December 1982. The case remains unsolved.

McCarty said he had an alibi for where he was that night, but it was shaky. He had been out drinking and doing drugs. The only people to call upon to vouch for him were "junkies, armed robbers, thieves."

"I didn't stand a chance," he said.

With no arrest three years after the murder, investigators came to McCarty as an acquaintance of Willis. He couldn't come up with who might have killed her, so he was arrested.

He clutched a tissue in his right hand, dabbing his face occasionally as his voice wavered from time to time during his hourlong talk.

Having just an eighth-grade education at the time, he described battles with poor legal representation, a lack of understanding of the process and flat out lies that were committed by the prosecution.

McCarty appealed and got a second trial with the same outcome. A rehearing on his sentencing again had the same outcome sentenced to death by lethal injection.

But the FBI saved his life.

They persisted in an investigation that revealed prosecutorial misconduct. Key evidence had been denied to the defense. Police chemist Joyce Gilchrist gave improper testimony about semen and hair evidence but it took seven more years before McCarty was freed.

"I don't know how to deal with what happened," he said.

McCarty told reporters before his talk that he literally has no goals because he long ago gave up dreaming and planning.

"Our courts are not governed by reason; they are governed by politics," McCarty said.

After his talk McCarty told members of the Nebraskans for Peace that he simply couldn't share with the public all of what happens in prison. Those acts aren't fit for a house of God, he said.

"It may have ruined me forever," he confided.

Because humans make mistakes, McCarty said, the death penalty should not exist.

"It is fallible we do make mistakes and we have to be careful," he said.

Amy Miller, an attorney and member of Nebraskans Against the Death Penalty, said Nebraska currently has 10 men on death row and paid $45 million to put them there.

There are better uses of taxpayer money alcohol counseling, rehabilitation, helping at-risk youth, she said.

The recent Nebraska Supreme Court ruling outlawing the use of the electric chair is a perfect time to end the death penalty altogether, she said.

Kurt Mesner of Central City agreed.

His sister, Janet Mesner, and her friend Victoria Lamm were killed inside a Quaker meeting house in Lincoln in 1981 by Randolph Reeves of Central City. Reeves was sentenced to death something the Mesner family opposed until that sentence was overturned in 2000.

Miller said many people like the Mesners don't need blood to deal with grieving. They need justice, not vengeance.

"It's an evil, terrible policy and it corrupts us all," McCarty said as he urged the audience of about 30 to demonstrate against the death penalty.

If you're ever invited to be on a jury, please be responsible," McCarty said in his call for accountability, honesty and integrity in the system.

When asked by a member of the audience if there was anything she or others could do for him, McCarty stood silent in thought.

"You've already given me what I need you've given me hope," he answered.