Innocent Death Row Ex-Inmate Speaks At ISU

A Valley man who helped get the death penalty banned in Illinois is trying to do the same in Indiana.

Randy Steidl was locked up on death row for murders he didn't commit.

He spoke Wednesday at Indiana State University about how easily his wrongful conviction happened.

"Ever been accused of something you didn't do, that maybe your brother or sister did, and mom and dad blamed you for it?"

Randy Steidl told ISU criminology students how he was wrongly convicted of the 1986 murders of Dyke & Karen Rhoads in Paris, Illinois.

"Remember that pain and hurt that you felt when you were pleading your case and nobody would listen?"

No one listened to Steidl either until a judge freed him after 17 years in prison.

"There's over 4,000 people on America's death rows. How many of them are actually innocent and sitting there without a voice?"

The Coles County resident now travels the country speaking out against the death penalty.

"I feel like God spared me for a reason and that was to speak for these people that are actually innocent and expose the system for what it is," says Steidl who helped get Illinois to ban the death penalty last month.

"I played a small role along with other great people of taking it away from them. It's like they had a privilege that they abused," says Steidl, "You can't play God with people's lives because there's a lot of times that prosecutors aren't that interested in justice, it's about winning."

Now that Illinois has banned capital punishment, Steidl is trying to also abolish it in the remaining 34 states, including Indiana.

"I hope Indiana lawmakers realize that this is a fallible system because fallible people implementing it. It's the human factor," Steidl says.

He's also trying to convince future law enforcement and lawyers to oppose the death penalty.

"I've had several after five minutes of speaking with them that have changed their minds on capital punishment. They realized this is an irreversible punishment," Steidl says, "Not just in what happens in Illinois but other states like Indiana, because we basically have the same system and it's an irreparable system. It's developed and it's implemented by human beings. Human beings make mistakes and it's the human factor that ended up putting 138 innocent men and women on death row in this country."

As we reported in March, Steidl is still wrongly convicted of those unsolved 1986 murders. Find out why the government never cleared his record by watching our investigation.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• randy steidle
• ISU
• witness to innocence
• Indiana

[Conneruuu]

@ten8goa well if there were only defence attorneys then nobody would be convicted of anything, even if they did it

[wize1]

a racist so-called justice system - what it is is a Prison Industrial Complex. USA is incarceration nation -- more prisoners than in any country in this planet!

[kambridge967]

@ten8goa hell yea fuck em!!!

[ten8goa]

Death to all prosecutors. They always say they have the right guy even after a person is proven innocent. Fuck em

[youngdones]

Dyke and Karen roads were murdered because they investigated political corruption in Illinois.