I am Reginald S. Lewis, a widely-published, award-winning, African American poet, essayist, and playwright.

I'm the author of two self-published collections of poetry entitled "Leaving Death Row," and my new book, "Inside My Head," is now out.

I've been a resident of Pennsylvania's death row for almost twenty long, harrowing years, for the stabbing death of a 250lb man in a seedy drug bar in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And if you can believe the prosecutions' witnesses - several of whom had long criminal records - the motive for this crime stemmed from a heated argument over a ridiculously small debt the victim allegedly owed the perpetrator. This is a deeply painful lie.

In the early 80's, I was a self-employed jewelry and perfume salesman. Though evidence establishing my whereabouts in San Diego, California, before, during, and after the commission of the crime was readily available - my sickly, half-deaf, incompetent, court-appointed attorney never bothered to call a total of six alibi witnesses who would've testified on my behalf. The greedy shyster pocketed the $2,500 allocated for my witnesses to be brought to Philly from California.

Imagine being tried for a (so-called) capital murder before the notorious hanging judge Albert F. Sabo. Imagine an equally racist prosecutor impaneling an illegal all-white jury that inevitably sentenced me to death.

However, it was a 1977 conviction for the murder of a New Jersey drug dealer (used as the sole "aggravating circumstance") this conviction-prone jury found which made me eligible for death. The breath left my body that day. It was as if I'd been hurled into the deep chasm of a horrific nightmare. The onus of blame I carried for my wild, reckless youth, my black rage, and misdirection landed me in an interminable shuttle wheeling through the drab, gloomy milieu that is death row.

But even though it looks as if there's overwhelming proof as to my guilt and complicity in this crime - things are not always as they seem to be.

In 1995, a sympathetic judge allowed me to reopen the 1977 conviction, where I was also shot point blank by a New Jersey police officer. The judge's judicial largesse amazed me. He provided me with a passel of court documents - files that were deliberately buried, suppressed, withheld. And they were shocking to the sense of justice.

There was a confession by the "actual triggerman" to a prosecution witness that could have exonerated me. More egregiously, the attorney who represented me, also secretly brokered a deal for the actual killer - the states' "star witness" - to be released from prison.

I knew nothing about the deal at the time. I was young, uneducated, and completely ignorant to the profundities of American jurisprudence, and the nuances of the Queen's exotic English, which was, to me, incomprehensible.

I know now that this is a classic case of "conflict of interest," which is a constitutional violation of great magnitude. The tainted New Jersey (conviction) means that I am illegally confined on Pennsylvania's death row - and so I've filed a civil rights lawsuit against officials in the state of New Jersey for "wrongful conviction."

I invite you to look for yourself, ask questions, write to me. I welcome any help you can give.

I am -

Reggie Lewis