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| Nebraska Death-Row Inmate Set Free |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 06/25/2001 |
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Former death-row inmate Jeremy Sheets grinned as he was released from prison recently, three years after he was ordered to die for convictions of kidnapping, raping and killing an Omaha girl. Sheets, 27, walked out of the Nebraska State Penitentiary in a T-shirt and blue jeans, becoming the first person freed from Nebraska's death row in 88 years. He did not speak to reporters. The Nebraska Supreme Court last year paved the way for his release when it threw out a taped statement used to convict Sheets in the murder of 17-year-old honor student Kenyatta Bush. The statement was made by a co-defendant Adam Barnett, who killed himself before the case went to trial. The state's high court said that allowing jurors to hear the statement violated Sheets' right to confront his accuser because his lawyers were unable to cross-examine Barnett. Without the taped statement, prosecutors said they did not have enough evidence to re-try the case. In May, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the state's appeal to reinstate the conviction. Bush was kidnapped outside Omaha North High School on Sept. 23, 1992. Her throat was slashed and her body was dumped in a wooded area north of the city. In his taped statement, Barnett told police that he and Sheets, after a night of taking LSD, decided to rape a black woman to get revenge on black men who date white women. He said Sheets stabbed Bush after she lost consciousness. In his 1997 trial, Sheets took the witness stand and denied that he hated blacks or had any involvement in the killing. 'I've never killed anybody,' he said. Douglas County Attorney Jim Jansen, who prosecuted the case, said it was painful to see Sheets go free. 'I'm convinced we tried and convicted the appropriate person,' Jansen said. During his three years on death row, Sheets appeared on billboards and in magazines as part of an advertising campaign against the death penalty by Italian fashion company Benetton. He is the first person to be released from Nebraska's death row since 1913 when Jay O'Hearn was furloughed. Prison and court records do not indicate what happened in that case. |
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