Home » Salem Award Media » News Article
Salem Award Symposium Thursday
- The Salem News Online Edition (June 10, 2003)
- By Tom Dalton, Staff Writer
SALEM – Betty Ann Waters was so convinced her older brother was innocent of murder that she went to law school to help free him from a life sentence in prison.
J. Scott Hornoff, a former Rhode Island detective wrongly convicted of murder, was released from prison only after the real killer, haunted by guilt, confessed to the crime.
Waters and Hornoff will be in Salem Thursday to take part in a first-ever symposium, "Seeking Justice—Protecting the Innocent," being held in conjunction with the presentation of the 2003 Salem Award for Human Rights and Social Justice.
The symposium, which is free and open to the public, begins at 3 p.m. at the Hawthorne Hotel.
The Salem Award, which was established in memory of the innocent victims of the Salem Witch Trials, will be presented Thursday night to Jim McCloskey, founder and executive director of Centurion Ministries of Princeton, N.J., which has freed 27 wrongly convicted prisoners over the past two decades.
"We can't think of a group that dovetails more closely with the goals of the Salem Award Foundation," said Kate Murray, chairwoman of the Salem Award Committee.
"In Salem in 1692, it took great courage to speak out on behalf of the innocent people accused and condemned for witchcraft. Jim McCloskey speaks out today for innocent people who are falsely accused of terrible crimes."
This is the first year the Salem Award Committee has run a symposium. In addition to Hornoff and Waters, the panel includes Hugo Bedau, a Tufts University professor who has written extensively about the death penalty and wrongful convictions; Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett; Boston University Law School professor Stanley Fisher, who founded the New England Innocence Project, which works to free wrongly convicted persons in this region; and David Goss, a local historian.
Waters received extensive media coverage in 2001 when her brother's conviction was overturned after she convinced a court to conduct DNA tests of blood samples on evidence stored in a courthouse basement.
Kenneth Waters, who was convicted of killing an Ayer woman, had been in prison for nearly 18 years.
Today, Betty Ann Waters is campaigning to have the state provide housing and other assistance to help the wrongfully convicted make their way back into society.
The Salem Award ceremony will begin at 7:30 Thursday evening. It also is free and open to the public.
McCloskey, 60, a Vietnam veteran, was a successful executive who left the business world in 1979 to enter the ministry. While studying for a master of divinity degree at Princeton University, he served as a student chaplain at a prison in Trenton.
He became so convinced of the innocence of an inmate, Jorge de los Santos, that he took a year off from school and raised $25,000 to investigate the man's case. After new evidence was uncovered, de los Santos was freed.
After earning his degree, McCloskey founded Centurion Ministries to continue investigating the cases of innocent people falsely convicted of crimes.
The 27 people freed by Centurion had served an average of 15 years in prison.
Past winners of the Salem Award include Gregory Allen Williams, a hero of the Los Angeles riots; Harry Wu, a Chinese dissident and political prisoner; and Leonard Zakim, the late executive director of the New England Anti-Defamation League.
A $100-per-person buffet reception will be held at the Hawthorne Hotel from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Thursday to raise funds for the Salem Award Foundation, which presents the award every year and cares for the Witch Trials Memorial.
Reprinted with permission from The Salem News.