Note: You are viewing the unstyled version of CBC.ca because you can not see our css files, or because you do not have a standards-compliant browser or you are a mobile user.

Welcome to CBC.ca

the fifth estate
RAY KRONE: THE INTERNET
MAIN - THE INTERNET

Krone today
Ray Krone was released from jail in 2002.
Canadians first met Ray Krone three years ago in the fifth estate program called Deathrow.com, an investigation into how the Internet was being utilized in the debate over the death penalty in the United States.

The program focused on a Toronto-based organization called the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty, which hosted websites for American convicts on death row. Opponents of capital punishment argued that sometimes the only way innocent people facing execution can get their voices heard is by posting their evidence and arguments on the web.

The CCADP further argued people needed to see the faces and hear the voices of those the state has condemned to death.

Proponents of the death penalty, especially the relatives of murder victims, argued death row inmates lost their right to freedom of expression after their convictions. They further say these sites, which often seek friends and try to solicit sympathy, are painful to see and disrespectful to their slain loved ones.


The internet played a role in Krone's release.

In response to these concerns, Arizona passed Bill 2376 in 2000 making it illegal for an inmate to have access to the internet, not just directly but through a third party that might maintain a website.

At the time the bill was passed, Ray Krone was in his eighth year in an Arizona prison, convicted in two trials of murdering a Phoenix bartender named Kim Ancona. At his first trial, Krone was sentenced to death, but that sentence was changed to life in prison after his second trial.

To publicize the frailty of the evidence against him, Krone's distant cousin Jim Rix maintained a website called Freeraykrone.com. This site was illegal under the new law.

In July 2002, the fight over the right of inmates to have web sites maintained for them moved to the Arizona courts when a lawsuit was launched by Arizona branch of the American Civil Liberties Union and Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty. The suit claimed the law was designed to "suppress the flow of information from prisoners to the outside world, and to chill the advocacy of plaintiffs and other anti-death penalty and prisoner-rights organizations."

Krone receives apology
On February 20, 2006, Arizona's House and Senate apologized to Krone for his ten year ordeal.

A federal judge halted the implementation of the new law in December 2002. A federal court struck down Bill 2376 five months later.

Ray Krone became the 100th man freed from a US prison after being sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit when another man incriminated himself as Kim Ancona's murderer during a taped conversation with Krone's lawyer.

After his exoneration and release, Ray Krone became an icon for opponents of capital punishment. That he was sentenced in Arizona, the state that banned inmate access to the Internet, gave his story extra relevancy to the story the fifth estate wanted to tell.

RESOURCES
Death Penalty Information Center
The Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty
American Civil Liberties Union
Witness to Innocence

CBC-TV MAIN | CBC DOCUMENTARIES
All external sites will open in a new browser