2001-04-16 By Roy Deering State Correspondent Daily Oklahoman

Dennis Fritz says it’s the simplest things in life he savors. Working in his garden or taking a walk on a warm summer evening fill him with joy. Even going to the movie is a special event. Fritz, 51, enjoys life’s special little freedoms because he’s part of a minuscule number of people who have served time on death row only to be released later with an apology.

"It’s really hard to explain, even though I’ve been asked hundreds of times what it’s like," Fritz said from his home in suburban Kansas City, Mo. "To have been in prison, convicted for a heinous murder for that many years, and then to just have them open the doors and let you go free one day — people just could never understand."

Fritz and Ron Williamson re-entered society April 15, 1999, more than a decade
after being convicted for the 1982 rape and murder of Debra Sue Carter, a 21-year-old waitress. They were convicted in 1988 and given death sentences. Last week, prison inmate Glen Gore, who testified against Fritz and Williamson, was charged in the killing. The charge came two years after DNA evidence freed the convicted men and implicated Gore.

Williamson, 48, and Fritz have filed a $100 million wrongful imprisonment suit since their release, but both said their greatest reward is the ability to walk free. "You just can’t imagine how it feels to be confined in a place like that to the point that you literally have given up on ever being a free man again," Fritz said, "and then, out of the blue, they open the doors and set you free — and you don’t know what to do."

While both men were convicted of the killing, it was Williamson who nearly died
for the crime. He came within five days of being executed on one occasion. The stress of having execution so close at hand has left him emotionall troubled, Williamson said. He still struggles with anger and bitterness.

"The people around me keep telling me that I have to try to let it go and move on," Williamson said, "but, you know, after what they put me through, it’s just not that easy. "I try every morning to tell myself that the anger will kill me, but I spent nearly 12 years in jail for something I didn’t do. I went in a relatively young man and
came out with a fourth of my life gone — just wasted. You don’t just get over that."

The two men were on death row longer than Bill Clinton was president. During their incarceration, the computer boom changed much of society, making even the most ordinary things a challenge for them when they were released.

"I couldn’t even work a gas pump," Williamson said. "I remember the day I
came out, I stopped with my sister to get some gas and I walked up to this computer-operated pump and just thought, ‘How in the world am I going to do this?’"

Williamson, a former minor league baseball player, plays the guitar and has worked at several nightclubs and cafes in Missouri and Oklahoma since his release. Fritz, a former schoolteacher, has had a difficult time holding a regular job. He was fired, he said, from one job when his employer learned of his past conviction.

"Dennis won’t come out and say it, but everything was going great on that job
in Kansas City until his boss found out he’d been convicted of murder," Williamson said. "It didn’t matter to that person that Dennis had later been proven not guilty.

"That’s exactly what people don’t understand. Just because the evidence proved we didn’t do it, and just because the court set us free, there are always going to be people who look at us as murderers who got away," Williamson said.

Fritz lives on a disability income and income from a menial job cleaning houses with his mother in the Kansas City area. He has embraced religion as a means of dealing with the stress of the conviction and the time spent in prison. He said that spirituality has helped him deal with his feelings of resentment.

"I lean on God for support," Fritz said. "I do that a lot and I work in my garden. I had a little garden in prison that helped me cope, and then they took that away from me. That’s when I really thought I had nothing left to live for, because that was the only thing that kept me going.

"Now I can put my hands in the dirt whenever I want," he said. "Now I can stand in the garden, or walk down the street without having a wall holding me in."

Both men have kept themselves busy since their release, traveling and spending time with family. Williamson said the most precious day of his life occurred two years ago when he walked as a free man out of the Pontotoc County Courthouse.

"Words can’t describe that day," he said. "It was surreal. It was strange. It was wonderful. Whatever word you pick, it would probably fit because there were so many emotions flowing through me."

Fritz, who said he hopes he never has to come back to Oklahoma, keeps a low profile and wants a quiet life. "I don’t want to be famous or be on television. I don’t want much, except to have my garden and be a free man. Anything else is just extra."

By World's Editorial Writers 4/16/01

Panel recommends moratorium

A proposal to halt executions in the Lone Star State is one "Texas plan" that Oklahoma will not enact any time soon.The Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee panel recently endorsed a plan to let voters decide whether to halt executions for two years in the nation's most active death penalty state.If approved by a two-thirds majority in the Senate and House, the resolution would put the issue before voters in November as a proposed amendment to the state constitution. If the plan is approved, Texas' death row would be shut down while the state studies how it administers the death penalty.

Anti-death penalty groups see the move as a good start to examining a system that executed 40 inmates last year and six this year. A moratorium was called last year in Illinois. But a similar suggestion in Oklahoma did not make it very far in the Legislature. Ten inmates have been executed this year and 40 have been put to death since the death penalty again was put into practice. While there has been some support for a moratorium, the idea has not gathered much steam. In February a House committee rejected a one-year moratorium on executions in the state.

The "Texas plan" is unlikely to get very far. About two-thirds of Americans polled this year said they support the death penalty for murderers. While there certainly are questions about the death penalty and the fairness with which its administered, it does not appear to be the will of the people in most death penalty states to step back and give it a second look.

Try walking in victims' shoes

I don't understand how people can even think about doing away with the death penalty. My daughter was murdered in 1996. I still would like to see the killers put to death in front of me. People talk about closure. These are people who have not lost a child or a loved one. I'm not saying that there's no such thing as closure, but I cannot see it for me until I know my child's killers have suffered worse than she did. But I guess that will never happen, since one of the men is serving life without parole,one is serving 15 years and the last was fortunate to get off with no time. I would like for those who want to abolish capital punishment to put themselves in the shoes of myself and my daughter's three children, who have to grow up without their mother. If they can then tell me that we should do away with the death penalty there is something seriously wrong with the people of this country. I believe there's no way they would feel this way if they had to wonder every day for the rest of their lives "Why did this happen to my child?" If people will rethink their protest of the death penalty and look at as if it might save the life of one mother or one child, it is damn well worth it.
Fred Boyce, Tulsa