TAMPA, Fla. — Several groups rallied Monday afternoon outside the Hillsborough County Courthouse against the death penalty.
They are traveling throughout the state this week as a Florida man is set to be executed Thursday at a prison in Starke.
People who were exonerated after serving time on death row are sharing their stories to create change.
"I do strongly believe the death penalty shouldn’t be intact. I’m the 23rd person to be exonerated from death row in the state of Florida," Herman Lindsey said.
Lindsey is now the executive director of Witness to Innocence.
Lindsey was accused of robbing a pawn shop in 1994 and then was accused of murder. A jailhouse informant told police that Lindsey committed the crime.
"He made up a story that I confessed to him in a jail cell," Lindsey said.
After several years on death row, Lindsey was exonerated.
"It’s a very traumatizing experience. Imagine being isolated most of the week. No phone. No speaking to your family," he said.
Derrick Jamison knows that feeling after he spent 20 years on death row. It took that many years for him to be proven an innocent man.
"In 1985, I was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to die in the state of Ohio," Jamison explained.
Jamison was accused of attacking someone who later died. He now lives in Tampa and has been free for 18 years.
"I was charged with that horrible crime and I had nothing to do with. Six times they came and asked me where I wanted my body sent and what I wanted for my last meal," Jamison recalled.
He can only describe death row as, "living in hell on earth."
Here in the Tampa Bay area, Robert DuBoise was exonerated in 2020. DuBoise was accused of raping and murdering a 20-year-old Tampa woman. He spent 37 years in prison until DNA freed him.
"We’re killing innocent people because I was almost executive on death row," Jamison said.
Their goal with rallying is to get lawmakers to get rid of the death penalty.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he does not want to make it easier, doing away with a unanimous jury.