The activist and former death row prisoner Darby Tillis has died of an apparent aneurysm at the age of 71. Tillis was sentenced to death in Illinois in 1979 for the murder of a hotdog stand employee. He was freed in 1987 after new evidence emerged, and 14 years later he became one of the first death row prisoners to be exonerated. On September 21, 2011, just hours before the execution of Troy Anthony Davis in Georgia, Tillis came on Democracy Now! and spoke about his commitment to abolishing the death penalty.

Darby Tillis: “But I was released from death row. I was not free of death row. I never will be free of death row.”

Amy Goodman: “What do you mean?”

Darby Tillis: “Death row lives in me. And this is why I’m here today. I will always continue, as long as there is a man anywhere on death row, to fight for the abolishment.”