When justice fails: collateral damage.

• Author: Keine, Ronald
• Position: Revealing the Impact & Aftermath of Miscarriages of Justice

Wayne "Doc" Greer was my best friend. We rode our Harley Davidsons through many states, Canada, and Mexico. We shared many things--a bottle, a joint, and sometimes the same women (yes, we were bikers and we did things like that). We shared our dreams and inner-most thoughts. We also shared the experience of being wrongly convicted, incarcerated, and on death row in New Mexico for a crime we did not commit.

He was in the cell next to me for the two years we spent on death row. Even now, thirty years later, when I give speeches and try to tell people about Doc, I get too emotional to finish the story. Even now as I write this essay, I find that dealing with it, reliving the hurt and the guilt of not acting, is difficult to bare. Doc committed suicide after we were exonerated and left death row.

His totally senseless death has troubled me for years and is more profound in my memory than my own entire ordeal on the row. I claim partial blame for this tragedy. I feel that I failed him. I didn't have his back, which was the biker's code. I should have seen it coming. My best friend needed help, and I ignorantly did not recognize it and let him die. He died as a direct result of his wrongful conviction, just as sure as if they had killed him in the death chamber. No official ever apologized or compensated Doc's family for what they did to him or to them.

I first met Doc in Detroit in 1969 when we were members of a motorcycle club called the "Minutemen." It was a small club, by Michigan bike club standards, of about thirty-five to forty members. I knew some of the members of the club as I had been riding for a few years as a loner. I was invited to a party at the clubhouse, which was on Gratiot and the I-94 freeway in Detroit--an area known for being a "tough" section of town. I was introduced to many members by their club name as real names were rarely used. When introduced to Doc, I asked him, "[w]hy do they call you Doc?" He stood up from his bar stool with his six-foot-something 275-pound frame. He looked down at me and replied, "[c]uz I tell 'em to." He ended his statement with a look that could only mean "you got a problem with that?" I replied, "Nice to meet you," and gave him the biker handshake.

Doc had quit his job as a foreman in one of the big three auto plants to pursue his life as a biker. He was well-respected by all who knew him and feared by those who didn't. With his almost bald head and menacing look, nobody fucked with Doc. After a while, Doc became my best friend. Little did we know that we would end up on death row together in New Mexico.

In 1969, a movie debuted called Easy Rider, starring Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson. (1) Dominant in this movie is a scene with Fonda and Hopper traveling across the states on their Harley choppers to the sound of Steppenwolf belting out "born to be wild ... head out on the highway, looking for adventure...." (2) This instantly became my life purpose. Doc concurred. We both had Harleys and needed badly to get out of Detroit. Not that we were in any trouble, but we knew that there was a better life out there somewhere. We wanted to ride with wind in our faces and be free. We thought there had to be something more than this mundane life. People who live in depressed areas of big cities know exactly what I'm talking about.

Not too long after setting out on our adventure, Doc and I were sitting on death row in New Mexico, convicted for a murder of which we knew absolutely nothing. The first year on the row was bad enough, but the second year was just plain nuts. Doc was in the cell to the left of me. He got into transcendental meditation and astral projection. He was writing a hippie girl from Albuquerque who taught him how to send his mind outside of his body. He would escape death row, leaving his...