This November 16th was supposed to be the last day of his life for Keith LaMar, an African American sentenced to the death penalty for crimes he supposedly did not commit. In July, his sentence was postponed to January 2027. an extension in which LaMar hopes to prove his innocence and with the help of new lawyers and music, leave three decades in “hell.”
LaMar, who has spent 35 of his 54 years behind bars, He defended his innocence in the book “Condemned,” which he published in 2014. In 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, a group of jazz musicians came to his defense, including Marquès, who suggested he record an album.
In July, his sentence was postponed to January 2027. | Photo: Taken from Instagram (@justiceforkeithlamar)
“They gave me additional time to do the work that was necessary (…) to finally put together an impressive legal team and a viable campaign to bring my story to a wider audience and resolve my situation in court “He said from death row.
“First step”
A year and a half ago, the CD “Freedom First” was released with lyrics by the prisoner and music by Marquès, who has taken his story to concert halls in Europe, South America and the United States, in which LaMar participates by telephone in prison in Youngstown, a small town in Ohio, in an unprecedented partnership.
“Music has brought my case to a wider audience and achieved things that I wouldn’t have made it otherwise. And with that comes more support and more public interest,” says this fan, who was saved by John Coltrane’s music from solitary confinement, where he spent much of his life.
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step,” says his latest song, in which he describes being “imprisoned in a tiny cell (…) in hell itself.”
“Mocking Justice”
In 1995, an all-white jury found LaMar guilty in the deaths of five of nine inmates and a guard killed in one of the worst riots in United States prison history, which occurred in 1993.
At that point, LaMar was already in prison for murdering an old childhood friend like him in a drug dispute in his hometown of Cleveland.
LaMar assures that he didn’t have a good defense and that He was the victim of a “mockery of justice” in a trial in which exculpatory evidence was concealed and other prisoners were “rewarded” with remission so that they could accuse him of being “black and poor.”
But now LaMar has the assistance of renowned human rights attorney Keegan Stephan of the law firm Beldock Levine & Hoffman, who is gathering evidence to appeal to the Ohio judicial system.
LaMar has spent 35 of his 54 years behind bars. | Photo: Taken from Instagram (@justiceforkeithlamar)
“I think there are many reasons to believe that he is innocent and that at the very least he did not have a fair trial.“ in a “highly politicized” case where there was a lot of political and institutional pressure for “guilty convictions,” Stephan told AFP.
“There was a significant amount of exculpatory evidence that was not presented to Keith and his defense team. “This constitutes a violation of the Constitution and should have resulted in the conviction being overturned,” he claims.
Meanwhile, LaMar is trying to stay “mentally and emotionally healthy and on solid ground” in what he hopes is the final phase of his nightmare.