Kenneth Reams was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for the killing of a white man during the course of an ATM robbery in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, despite another person confessing to committing the crime, clear-cut jury discrimination, and his appointed defense counsel providing extremely ineffective assistance in preparing and arguing his case.
Mr. Reams received the death penalty while his co-defendant – who was the shooter in this case – was allowed to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence. When he was sentenced in 1993, Reams was the youngest person to enter death row in Arkansas, at the age of 18.
Mr. Reams was represented by an appointed lawyer who did not properly investigate the case, did not retain necessary experts, and did not meaningfully challenge the government’s case against Mr. Reams. The trial prosecutors excluded black prospective jurors on the basis of race and withheld from the defense critical evidence that would have undermined the state’s case. Additionally, Mr. Reams was tried by a judge who was later convicted of a felony and removed from the bench.
The Arkansas state Supreme Court affirmed Mr. Reams’ conviction in 1995. LDF and co-counsel represented Reams in his effort to throw out his death sentence and ultimately succeeded in 2018 when the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed the reversal of Mr. Reams death sentence.
In the 5-2 decision, the state Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision to vacate Mr. Reams’ death sentence, citing that he was denied a fair sentencing determination due to ineffective counsel during the penalty phase of his trial. The court also agreed that the purposeful manipulation of the jury panels to decrease minority juror participation constituted structural error.
Mr. Reams spent 20 years on death row before his death sentence was overturned. In prison, with the specter of capital execution looming for over two decades, Reams nonetheless pushed forward to turn pain and disillusionment to purpose. Kenneth Reams is an artist and a poet. His works speak of resilience, injustice, isolation – and of dying and the thereafter. He created art not only reflecting his life, but art that held a mirror to the prison-industrial complex and its many machinations.
