By Ron Keine, Witness to Innocence

It is Christmas time on the row. At night I can hear the muffled sounds of a grown man crying in his pillow. His trusty pillow which is his only safe confidant as emotions are seen as weakness in prison and can even get you killed. Everywhere in the world it is a time for happiness, a time to rejoice, but here on death row it is depression and sadness in the very souls of us death row denizens.

I miss the excitement of the mythical but harmless prevarications and fibs employed to instill the concept of Santa Claus in the quizzical minds of children. Memories that will last a lifetime. The legacy of elves and fairies.

Awkward sadness permeates every molecule of the stone and steel that surrounds us. That stone and steel that separates us from our loved ones at this solemn time of year. While the children are opening presents on Christmas morning, reveling in bliss, miles away in some forgotten dungeon cell, a tear runs down my cheek. As the family sits down, heads bowed for the meal’s prayer, I sit alone on my steel bunk and try to picture the lone bare table setting that my mother arranged in my honor. There will be no Christmas dinner for me this year. My prison issued dinner looks sickening as it defiantly slides down the windows and walls outside of my cell as if it was trying to rejoin the steel tray laying on the floor beneath it.

Why must I suffer like this? Why am I here? It will be almost another year before I will be exonerated when it is discovered that the prosecutor hid the evidence of my innocence and manufactured the case against me. I have done nothing to deserve this, but I feel helpless to change the situation. That arrogant prosecutor is probably sitting next to a beautiful Christmas tree, opening the presents with his children while I sit in despair. Who is the real criminal here?

I must fight these emotions or they will drag me down even deeper in this pit of loneliness. I must cast them off before they become too much of a burden to bear. Before I get so mired down in this hopelessness that I become like Larry, down in cell 14 who succumbed to the pressures and hung himself yesterday.  

Yes, the following year would bring both my exoneration, and that of my best friend Doc who had occupied the cell next to mine. It would also bring Doc’s suicide.

It’s 40 Christmases later now, and I still remember the pain, loneliness, and sense of helplessness of that place. I remember those who were with me on death row, often think of those there now, and never forget the families who are suffering alongside  but apart from- their incarcerated loved ones.

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Ron Keine is an Assistant Director of Membership and Training for Witness to Innocence. He was convicted in 1974 and in 1976 released following a newspaper investigation. Learn more about Ron’s story and 90 Million Strong partner, WTI.