Former prosecutor explains why the Beatrice Six case caused him to oppose the death penalty

Posted By: Veronica Ortega

vortega@klkntv.com

Criminal prosecutor and former Gage County Attorney Randall Ritnour was joined by Omaha State Senator Burke Harr at a press conference hosted by the group, Retain a Just Nebraska, to talk about the Beatrice Six case.

This week a federal jury awarded the group about $28 million in damages for their time spent behind bars in the 1985 rape and murder case of 68 year old Helen Wilson. Ritnour says it was one of the largest false confession cases in U.S. history.

"We can’t say that it’s not possible to make a mistake because we did, we made a huge one," Ritnour said.

The Six claim they were forced into giving false confessions by authorities and the treat of the death penalty. Although no evidence was found to support this assertion, the jury still agreed that the investigation was reckless.

Sen. Harr, a former deputy county attorney in Omaha says this case is proof that’s it’s possible to condemn the wrong person of a capital crime.

"No system is 100% full proof and when you take that life from somebody there’s no coming back, and that’s one of my concerns and that’s why I’m here today," Harr said.

They say then-Gage County Attorney Dick Smith says he would have liked to have seen the death penalty in the case. Ritnour who supervised the 2008 DNA testing that exonerated the six says the risk of another mistake is too great.

"What I began to realize was that had it happened we would have been guilty of mistakenly taking the lives of six innocent people," Ritnour said.

He says we have the means to punish the guilty and that’s with life in prison without the possibility of parole. Nebraskans will get to decide the fate of the death penalty in November.