First days outside prison tough for former death row inmate

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- In the days since he's been out of prison, Joseph Amrine says he's struggled with strange contraptions like television remote controls and cordless phones.

"I couldn't turn the TV on," Amrine, who spent 26 years in prison -- 17 of them on death row for a murder he didn't commit -- told The Kansas City Star on Wednesday. "I couldn't answer the phone."

Amrine, 46, returned to Kansas City Monday following his release from jail.

In April, the Missouri Supreme Court overturned his conviction and death sentence for the 1985 murder of a fellow prison inmate, but he had remained in a county jail pending a possible retrial. On Monday, Cole County Prosecutor Bill Tackett said he would not retry Amrine, allowing him to be released from prison.

In prison he missed so much, Amrine said, including the deaths of his mother, father, a niece and nephew. The son that was a toddler when he went away is now 28.

Since his release, he hasn't been to a movie.

"I haven't got to the point where I'm used to being around a crowd, let alone a crowd in the dark."

He couldn't sleep for two nights because he didn't hear the reassuring click of a cell door slamming shut, he said -- a signal that he was safe for the night.

In 1986, Amrine was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1985 stabbing murder of fellow inmate Gary Barber of St. Louis.

Amrine had been in prison for robbery, burglary and forgery and would have been released in 1992. Barber, formerly of St. Louis, was imprisoned for burglary, auto theft and stealing.

At his trial, key testimony against Amrine came from three former inmates, all of whom have since recanted. Six other prisoners testified that Amrine had been playing cards elsewhere in the prison when Barber was fatally stabbed.

None of that seemed to do much good in appeals.

"We took some crushing blows in court," Amrine said.

Meanwhile, Amrine played basketball, chess and worked on his appeals and those of friends on death row. "Whatever it took to get through the day," he said.

There were days when he gave up and was ready to die, he said, and then he would call defense attorney Sean O'Brien, who became involved in the case in 1996, or O'Brien's partner, Kent Gipson. From them, Amrine said, he drew hope for the next fight.

In 1998, a federal judge denied his appeal. And in 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case. O'Brien filed for clemency from Missouri Gov. Bob Holden and got nowhere. He decided to make a desperate plea for the Missouri Supreme Court to hear a late appeal based on innocence.

After more than 15 years of defending death-penalty cases, O'Brien said, he was very afraid for Amrine -- until one moment in a hearing in February. A judge on the state Supreme Court asked Assistant Attorney General Frank Jung whether he was asking the court to execute Amrine even if he were innocent

Jung said, "That's correct, your honor," and he noted past rulings that required that constitutional trial errors be proved before an innocent defendant be found innocent.

One judge put his head in his hands. O'Brien said, "I knew at that moment that Joe would not be executed."

O'Brien, 47, said that moment led to an important high court opinion and a blow against the death penalty in Missouri.

"When they finally stand up and say, 'Fairness is no longer an issue; it's time to kill,"' he said, "I think it's the beginning of the end for the death penalty."

After the high court overturned Amrine's murder conviction and death sentence in April, it said the state would have to charge him again or release him.

Tackett said Monday he would not charge Amrine.

O'Brien, anticipating that announcement, was already on the highway when he got the call from Amrine and heard him say: "'They're letting me out."'

After securing a set of ill-fitting clothes, Amrine collected a check for the $14 balance in his prison account and left to start a new life. He knows that innocent prisoners often have mental problems after release; he doesn't know whether he will.

"See me in three weeks," he said. For now, he said, "I'm going to have a ball."