Gary
Drinkard
Gary Drinkard was sentenced to death in 1995 for the robbery and murder of a 65-year-old automotive junk dealer in Decatur, Alabama, two years earlier. Gary was assigned two court-appointed lawyers, one who did collections and commercial work and another who represented creditors in foreclosures and bankruptcy cases. Though he was at home at the time the murders took place, he was convicted and sentenced to death. His lawyers failed to present the testimony of two physicians who would have testified that Gary had recently suffered a severe back injury that made it physically impossible for him to commit the crime.
Despite the conviction, Gary maintained his innocence. He could not believe that he had been convicted. “The system is broken,” Gary says. “I don't think the death penalty is appropriate for anyone. I think God is the only one who has the right to take a life.”
Gary’s conviction rested primarily on the testimony of his half-sister, who faced charges in an unrelated robbery. In exchange for her testimony, all charges against her were dismissed. Her common-law husband, who was facing some of the same charges as Gary’s half-sister, also testified that Gary had committed the murder.
In 2000, two years after the Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama affirmed the conviction, the Alabama Supreme Court reversed and remanded the case for a new trial based on prosecutorial misconduct. After his conviction was overturned on appeal, attorneys and investigators from the Southern Center for Human Rights, working with Alabama lawyers Richard Jaffe and John Mays, represented Gary at his retrial in 2001 and won an acquittal. The Center later presented Gary to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee to illustrate the need for competent lawyers for those facing the death penalty.
“The guys there are just like you and me,” Gary says of those he met on death row. “People depict them as animals in a cage to be kept in chains. They’re human beings. They’re decent human beings. Some made a bad mistake. But people change. Some guys down there need to be down there for a long, long time, maybe the rest of their life. But a lot of guys down there changed and would never harm someone again.”
Today, Gary lives and works in Cullman, Alabama, and is active in the movement to abolish the death penalty.