“I’m Innocent”: Keith LaMar Speaks Live from Death Row About His Case, Conditions & Pending Execution

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

We end this holiday special with Keith LaMar in his own words, speaking from death row in Ohio. Keith LaMar has been imprisoned for 36 years, 32 years in solitary confinement, 30 years on death row. His self-published memoir is Condemned: The Whole Story. Keith LaMar is also releasing a new album on May 30th titled Live from Death Row. It documents a 2023 concert in Brooklyn when LaMar performed via the phone with a group of acclaimed musicians, including the pianist Albert Marquès. Well, on May 31st, Marquès will lead an album release party concert, with Keith LaMar joining from death row, at Joe’s Pub here in New York.

I recently spoke with Keith LaMar by phone about life on death row and the growing campaign to save his life. I asked him: What’s it like to live on death row?

KEITH LAMAR: Well, I think the operative word is “lived” on death row. I’ve lived. You know, early on, when I first came here, I met and was mentored by this older gentleman named Snoop. He’s the one who turned me on to jazz. He’s the one who really introduced me to literature, serious books, books that ultimately changed my self-concept.

But this is a soul-crushing environment. You see a lot of young people coming here without the means, the resources to fend off the ills, the ravages of being in this type of place, because sensory deprivation is — it robs you of your humanity. And, you know, before long, you see young guys unraveling. So, then, seeing that, being in proximity to that kind of pain, has been really, really devastating.

But, you know, I share books. I share my understanding and wisdom I’ve accumulated with the young people around me. So, I more or less work for the system, you know, but in a proactive way, trying to help young people in the ways in which I myself was helped. You know, I am in possession of my faculties because other people helped me. And so, I try to extend that help in return, yeah. But it’s a soul-crushing environment, definitely.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the making of this film, explaining your case, and what you’re hoping to accomplish right now? You have made this film. You do live concerts that are performed around the world, remarkably, where you’re joining from death row. You have book clubs, where your own book is read, but where you also lead in discussion of other books, as well, with high schools and other places. Talk about your message, Keith.

KEITH LAMAR: Well, I, you know, from the very beginning, just wanted to stand on my innocence. You know, it was never really a matter of me not wanting to speak out, to stand up for myself, but that was the whole point of me demanding the trial. But the whole system, I soon found out, is centered around appearance around operating within prescribed parameters and whatnot. And I was advised to remain quiet during my trial and the day after, and I did. You know, I went along with it. You know, that’s what we do. And, you know, other smarter, more learned people would speak on my behalf, would stand up and fight for my life, you know, and I believed that. And I just kept going deeper and deeper into the darkness, until I found myself in this really, really desperate place where I was really standing on the brink of my existence. You know, I had to find out the hard way that in order for my life to be mine, that I had to stand up and fight it. You know, so that was really the thing that was the catalyst that pushed me to start speaking up and reaching to utilize my own agency. And all of these things that you just mentioned is a product of that general thrust, you know, that thing that’s just coming to the conclusion that if I don’t stand up right now, then I might lose my life.

And so, that was the thing that kind of started the movie. You know, I first started — I wrote the book that you mentioned, Condemned, and that was over 200 pages. And not long after that, a dear friend of mine, Lorry Swain, produced a documentary, which was 30 minutes. And so, we was trying to figure out a way to condense it even more, because, you know, of course, people have short attention spans. We understand — I understand that people have their own problems, have their own lives to live out. And so, you know, it’s asking a lot to ask someone to sit down and read a 200-some-page book or a 30-minute documentary. But we thought that if we could condense the story into a seven-minute short, then possibly that could garner more attention. So, that was the whole impetus behind creating the movie.

AMY GOODMAN: Keith LaMar, in your book Condemned about Bobby Sands, if you can explain who he is —

KEITH LAMAR: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — his hunger strike, and how it inspired you to go on a hunger strike, which led to your case being known? I mean, you’ve been written about in The New York Times. You have jazz greats playing with you, supporting your cause.

KEITH LAMAR: Yeah. One of my friends, who I think you might know, named Staughton Lynd, was a famous historian, social activist. He, in the beginning, when I was first sentenced to death, was sent to death row, he somehow found his way into my life. And he sent me that book about Bobby Sands, Nothing But an Unfinished Song, written by Denis O’Hearn, who has since become a very close friend of mine. He sent me that book. And as I was reading it, it felt as if I was being sent a message. You know, I had been pleading with these people — it was going on 18 years — in a civil suit that was 18 years, all to no avail. And, you know, I was reading this book, and it was almost a last-ditch effort before I was about to give up.

And Bobby Sands and his comrade — Bobby Sands, for those who don’t know, was an Irish prisoner who, along with several of his comrades, went on a hunger strike in Ireland. And, you know, some of their demands were very basic, just to be treated as human beings, which, of course, resonated with me. And not long after I finished that book, I reached out to the author, Denis O’Hearn, and I wrote him. We struck up a correspondence. He came in to see me. We became really close friends.

And I decided to undergo a hunger — enact a hunger strike myself. I, along with several other prisoners here at the supermax, went on hunger strike. And after 18 years of not being able to break through court cases and all that, in 12 days of being on a hunger strike, I was sitting in a visitor room with my family. And that was like a seminal moment in my journey. It kind of taught me that if anything is going to change, you have to stand up and speak out on your own. And, you know, one of my literary heroes, Richard Wright, he wrote in his book Black Boy that if you speak out who you are, you will discover that you are not alone.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring in your lawyer, Keegan Stephan. In one of Trump’s —

KEITH LAMAR: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — first executive orders, January 20th, was to restore the death penalty, Trump said, which includes the order that attorneys general — the attorney general ensures all states have necessary drugs. This is Keith’s second execution date. What is it? January 13th, 2027. If you can explain what happens right now in court, where the case stands in court, and the role of the Ohio governor, Mike DeWine, the position he has taken, since he, not Trump, would decide what happens, ultimately, to Keith LaMar?

KEEGAN STEPHAN: Yes. Hi, Amy. And thanks for elevating Keith’s case.

You know, Keith, unfortunately, exhausted his direct appeals long ago. The state courts and federal courts looked at his trial and determined, incorrectly, that there were no constitutional deficiencies, and upheld his conviction and his death sentence. I do think that any fair-minded jurist looking at his trial now would deem it unconstitutional and overturn his convictions.

Unfortunately, the only way back into court is to find newly discovered evidence. So, me and a team of attorneys have been reviewing all the records in his case and talking to witnesses for the last two years, trying to turn up newly discovered evidence. We have discovered a lot of new evidence supporting Keith’s innocence. You know, I started as a skeptic. I’m a prison abolitionist, definitely an abolitionist of the death penalty. It doesn’t matter to me if he’s guilty; he shouldn’t be put to death. But I can tell you, after looking at the record, talking to witnesses, there is no doubt in my mind that he is actually innocent.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about your evolution in prison? You went into prison when you were 19 years old.

KEITH LAMAR: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: You hadn’t graduated from high school. Talk about going to school in prison. Talk about every, you know — 

KEITH LAMAR: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — what happened to you since.

KEITH LAMAR: Well, I dropped out in the 10th grade. You know, I was still living a hand-to-mouth existence, basically, when the crack epidemic exploded in Cleveland, Ohio, around 1985, ’86, when I was around 16 years old or so. I had been living on my own for about a year or so at that time, and I got deeply immersed in the drug trade. And when I came to prison, after tragic events we’ve already spoken about, I got my GED and enrolled in college.

But that wasn’t really the pivot. You know, the pivot happened when I started my own education, when I — and the first serious book I read was The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and that was a pivot, you know? That was a real eye-opening thing. And I was constantly meeting these real brilliant individuals here in prison. They mentored me, became father figures. I joined a boxing team and met the guy who taught me how to play chess. I met this guy who taught me how to write, you know, the difference between a semicolon and an independent clause. I was learning all these things, things I didn’t learn in school. I learned this from other prisoners. You know, that’s the misconception that a lot of people have about people in prisons, that we’re all animals and all these things. But these are just poor people. And, you know, some of these poor people, when they arrive here, they want to try to understand why they are here. And, you know, I began that quest myself.

And when I came to death row, all those things kind of — because I had just went through this experience of a trial, which was nothing short of a mockery. All the evidence was withheld. Twenty-two thousand pieces of evidence was burned, as I talk about in the movie. All the conflicting statements that challenged the state’s characterization of the facts was suppressed. You know, an all-white jury was impaneled. And during the whole trial, the courtroom remained empty. It was only when it was time to sentence me to death that people showed up. So, the community wasn’t concerned about the evidence. They was just concerned about the day in which they would be able to watch a lynching. And it wasn’t ’til months later, when I was already on death row, that I actually saw those famous lynching pictures that you see in books and whatnot, and I knew it was something that I had just gone through.

And so, that, along with my reading — I started reading James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Charles Mills, [inaudible], Walter Rodney, C. L. R. James. I started reading. All these people became like active professors in my education, my maturation and music. You know, my love for music, for jazz, grew, you know, simultaneously with my love of learning and reading and whatnot. And, you know, I gradually found my way back to myself. I achieved myself. You know, had I taken a deal, you know, I would have died like something of a premature death, you know, because I would have never realized who I am today. And so, I don’t have regrets about making that hard decision, but it was ignorance that allowed me to do it. I didn’t know what I didn’t know about the system, you know, and how it functioned. And, you know, thank God for that, yeah, because I probably would have taken the easy way out and missed the opportunity to find out who I was, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring back Keegan Stephan into this conversation, your lawyer. He’s speaking to us from New York City. You’re on death row in Ohio state. Keegan, if you could explain? When Keith talks about taking the deal the first time, and then the second time saying he wanted to go to trial, explain how that — it’s not him going into prison, where he went right onto death row. It’s after the Lucasville uprising.

KEEGAN STEPHAN: Yeah, that’s right. So, Keith’s original crime of conviction, as everyone heard, was for basically a self-defense killing. When he was selling drugs when he was very young, someone attempted to rob him. He fought back. They shot at him. He shot back. You know, I think most people would deem that a self-defense killing, but under a legal doctrine called “unclean hands,” he couldn’t apply that. His counsel at the time encouraged him to plead guilty, and he did.

And then he was sent to Lucasville at a very unfortunate time, right before this uprising occurred, and then these murders got pinned on him. And then, when he was being tried for those murders, he was offered a plea deal, which is a wild plea deal in retrospect, that he would have been given time that would have run concurrently with the sentence he was already serving for his original crime of conviction. He would have effectively done no more time. I mean, I think that’s a very, very strong signal that they knew they had a weak case, but they just wanted somebody to take the fall. But Keith, you know, stood on his convictions and his innocence and said he wasn’t going to do it. He wasn’t going to admit to murders he hadn’t committed. And that, you know, choice has made all the difference.

He was convicted, despite a trial that was unfair on its face, and then turned out to be even more unfair after all of the suppressed evidence came out. As Keith mentioned, you know, after trial, he learned that other people had admitted to some of the murders that he was convicted of committing. But those confessions weren’t turned over in a usable form. Many other people said, you know, who did the murders and didn’t name Keith. That incredibly exculpatory evidence was not turned over in a usable form. All of that was found and used on appeals, but his convictions were upheld in some very unjust decisions.

Now his only way back into court is through newly discovered evidence and another motion starting in the state court, which is going to take time to litigate, which is what his legal team, including myself, are working on now.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, the death date is set for January 13th, 2027. Keegan, can you talk about President Trump’s executive order? I think it was on the first day, on January 20th, where he tried to make sure the attorney general gets execution drugs to the states. In fact, that’s why Keith LaMar’s first execution date was vacated, because Ohio didn’t have the drugs to inject in him.

KEEGAN STEPHAN: Yes, it’s a horrifying executive order. I think it exemplifies that the cruelness is the point to this administration. You know, many drug companies are sort of uncomfortable providing the drugs that are used to effect executions in this country. And for that reason, Ohio has been unable to execute people since Governor DeWine has taken office.

It’s horrifying, and it may, in fact, enable Ohio to move forward with executions, which could likely make Keith’s current execution date a very real execution date, which is a absolutely terrifying prospect. I’ve spent time with Keith on death row.

AMY GOODMAN: How do you live with this specter, Keith LaMar, over your head, the specter of death, that there is a date for you to die?

KEITH LAMAR: The test to your existence is daunting. I won’t even try to, you know, deny that. You know, but if I focus too much on it, Amy, it will immobilize me. It will stop me or prevent me from doing the things that need to be done. You know, a lot of times when you see guys in my situation, you very rarely hear from them directly. There’s always someone else speaking for them. And sometimes that’s because there’s rules to prevent you from speaking on your behalf. But we filed a lawsuit. And so I’m perfectly within my rights to do what I’m doing, you know, to speak out for my life. And I intend to do that.

You know, just thinking about what you just asked Keegan about, the executive order, and, you know, it’s maddening. It’s maddening when you think about, you know, here’s a person who rants and raves about the injustice of the system when it relates to him personally, and yet you see the overhaul that’s going on where there’s no awareness or connection to his own personal experience. I mean, if he is to believe the system is corrupt, and yet the same person is arming this very corrupt system to take other people’s lives, human beings’ lives, but it’s on par or of a piece with everything else that flows from the system and where we are right now, with the direction that we are moving in right now as a country.

You know, but me personally, you know, I have all these amazing people who are actually fighting with me — not for me, but with me. And for that, I’m really, really — I’m truly grateful. You know, I try not to dwell too much on the execution date, because I don’t want to give it validity, you know, where that becomes a self-fulfilling thing in my life. I want to move in the opposite direction and push against that, you know, in every way possible, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Amy Gordiejew into this conversation. She’s the director of the Justice for Keith LaMar Foundation, speaking to us, I believe, also from Youngstown, but not inside the prison, outside. She’s a high school teacher. Amy, can you talk about what the Justice for Keith LaMar Foundation is and the kind of global outreach that Keith has been able to do from prison with the support, as he said, it, of people working with him?

AMY GORDIEJEW: Thank you so much for having me on, Amy.

Justice for Keith LaMar has evolved. It used to be just a group of friends and supporters here in Ohio, and it was kind of a slogan we had. But in time, as our movement grew, we realized we needed to develop this into something more organized. And so, we are now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Our mission is to bring healing and support to those who are wrongfully convicted.

And so, as Keith has advocated for himself, it really — for me, I saw a lot of returns after he published his book, Condemned. It just meant that people knew his story and wanted to be, you know, more involved with him, just engaging in their various platforms. And ultimately, the music led us to different continents, all over the world, really. And it’s been really a very, very beautiful, meaningful thing to be able to involve more and more people who hear his story. And again, what Keith said is so true, that he is rare in this area, because so often someone is talked about, and they sit out of reach and out of our earshot. And here’s Keith advocating for himself at every step of the way.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to Keith LaMar, live on death row at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown, not far from where Amy is right now, who’s about to teach in high school in Youngstown.

Keith, I’m looking at an article in The New York Times from a few years ago, “Jazz Freed Keith LaMar’s Soul. Can It Help Him Get Off Death Row?” And it says, “With concerts and a new album, musicians are trying to draw attention to the case of an inmate, convicted in the death of five other prisoners, who they believe deserves a new trial.” And it talks about your working together with jazz musicians, with some of the greats, like Albert Marquès, who’s the pianist, composer, New York City schoolteacher, people like Brian Jackson, Salim Washington, Arturo O’Farrill, Caroline Davis, who are involved with these Freedom First concerts and the concerts that will lead up to the big event at Joe’s Pub on May 31st, your 56th birthday. What’s it like to make this music together, you with the poetry? I saw the picture in your room. You’ve got a keyboard?

KEITH LAMAR: Yeah, I have a keyboard, you know, and a beginner’s manual on how to play it, which, because all the things you mentioned, I haven’t really had too much time. But it’s aspirational more than anything, to be honest, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: So, how do you work together?

KEITH LAMAR: But yeah, yeah. Well, same way how I’m working with you right now. You know, I’m sitting here wedged between the toilet and the door. And, you know, it’s a real uncomfortable position. But, you know, I have my eyes closed. I have on a pair of earbuds. And, you know, I just leave it all to the universe, you know, whatever. You know, it’s amazing. I mean, it shouldn’t be possible. I say that in the lyrics, you know, shouldn’t even be doable, the things that we are doing. You know, Albert Marquès, who you mentioned, had the idea, after exchanging letters with me, that we could probably collaborate in this particular medium to, you know, elevate my story.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about your book clubs, students around the country, high school kids, meeting with you to talk about books? Explain how it works.

KEITH LAMAR: Well, the same way I’m talking to you now. I call in, and a group of young people are gathered in the classroom. You know, when I initially started the book club, it was an attempt to pinpoint or go back and see where things went wrong in my own life. When I was 13, I was sent away to a juvenile facility for six months. And, you know, I had all the things that is prevalent with young people like myself. You know, dysfunctional childhood, abuse and all those things were present. But I’m thinking about: What can I do? When was the opportunity for me to intervene and change the trajectory of my life? And although I started reading seriously when I was in my twenties, I thought that maybe if I can get some books back to my 13-year-old self, that maybe I can change the trajectory of that young person’s life. And so I started off going into juvenile facilities here in Ohio, and that ultimately grew into this thing where I was, you know, going into high schools, because I also realized that I was in high school, and I wasn’t learning anything. You know, it’s this thing that Carl Jung talk about, directed thinking and fantasy thinking, that I was absorbed in the fantasy side of it. I wasn’t really — I didn’t really know how to connect the dots. And reading was the thing that allowed me to kind of cultivate that sense. And so I wanted to give that as a gift to young people, to help them navigate the complexities, because life is complicated. And it’s even more complicated when you are poor and disadvantaged, marginalized and all those other things. And reading, particularly autobiographies, you know, is the thing that helped me. And so, I wanted to somehow go back and provide this material to young people.

AMY GOODMAN: Keith, thank you very much for spending this time with us, live from death row, from the Ohio State Prison in Youngstown, Ohio.

PHONE SERVICE: Thank you for using GTL.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s what he hears a lot when he’s on the phone.

AMY GOODMAN: Keith LaMar, speaking from death row in Ohio. He’s scheduled to be executed in 2027. On May 31st, a concert will be held at Joe’s Pub here in New York to mark the release of his new album, Live from Death Row. Keith will perform from death row, along with the jazz pianist Albert Marquès and others. We also spoke to his lawyer, Keegan Stephan, and Amy Gordiejew, director of the Justice for Keith LaMar Foundation. And that does it for today’s show. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.