Our Boards
Our advisory board, composed entirely of currently incarcerated individuals, offers invaluable firsthand experience and insights that drive our mission to advocate for humane conditions and rehabilitative treatment in Missouri prisons.
Michael Whitfield
Mike has been wrongfully convicted and unjustly incarcerated for more than 32 years. He is a soft-spoken leader and elder who has mentored countless young men over the years. Mike is presently in a program called “Dynamo,” a new test program that allows more freedom to those who have been incarcerated for more than 30 years and who have excellent institutional records.
Maurice Davis
Maurice was wrongly convicted of a 1997 double murder in Kansas City in 2004. He received two life sentences without parole and is currently confined at the Jefferson City Correctional Center (JCCC). Maurice works in the “Handicap Center,” which is a contracted job from the Missouri Center for Braille & Narration Production. He writes computer code that converts math books for students in K-12 into braille. He received a diploma from Blackstone Career Institute certifying him to be a legal assistant/paralegal.
Maurice is currently the president of the NAACP Prison Branch at JCCC. He writes legislative proposals for prison reform and facilitates NAACP leadership workshops. View his website to learn more about Maurice and his fight for exoneration.
Patricia Prewitt
Patty Prewitt is a 74-year-old lifer who has served nearly 40 years for a 1984 murder she did not commit. She’s currently a Washington University student at the WERDCC prison in Vandalia with a 4.0 GPA and will earn her Associate’s degree in December. She’s also a member of Prison Performing Arts, St Louis. In addition to Patty’s academic achievements and extracurricular activities, she is a beloved matriarch and elder to countless women who are currently and formerly incarcerated.
Board of Directors
Maurice Davis was wrongfully convicted in Kansas City, Missouri as an accessory to a 1997 homicide. He received two sentences of life without probation or parole and is incarcerated at the Jefferson City Correctional Center (JCCC). Upon his incarceration at JCCC in 2005 Maurice worked as a prison law clerk. Since 2008, he has worked for the Center for Braille and Narration Production translating educational books into braille for blind students in grades K-12, initially creating audiobooks and since 2020, Maurice has been programming math books into braille.
Maurice received his Paralegal certification from Blackstone Academy in 2022 and has graduated from several leadership programs, including Servant Leadership and the Global Leadership Academy (GLA). Currently he is a GLA mentor teaching leadership development to young men at JCCC. Maurice has also been tapped as a keynote speaker in many events and programs throughout the years at JCCC.
He is also an advisor with Jailhouse Lawyer Initiative, a clinical program of the Bernstein Institute of NYU School of Law, Board President of the Missouri Justice Coalition, founding member of the MoLegal Collective, and has served as president of the NAACP Prison Branch 4072 at JCCC for nearly a decade.
Maurice has drafted several legislative proposals in Missouri to end mandatory minimums and legislation restricting the use of jailhouse informant testimony. In 2025 the Missouri General Assembly passed into law two provisions originally authored by Maurice that create a database to track incentivized witnesses and their testimony. The new law also required prosecutors to notify the victim of any incentivized witnesses prior to any deal being made in exchange for testimony. Maurice continues to fight his more than two decades of wrongful conviction and incarceration as an innocent person. He has filed pro se briefs and motions to fight his wrongful conviction in court, and has assisted other incarcerated persons as a ‘jailhouse lawyer’.
Dawn Oliver-Ramsey (she/her/Duchess) is a homegrown community organizer from Kansas City, MO. Dawn’s work unapologetically focuses on Black liberation, abolishing institutions of harm, and centering the leadership of those closer to the problem(s). Among other things, Dawn is a matriarch, aspiring abolitionist, 2022 Law for Black Lives (L4BL) Fellow, 2024 National Council FreeHer Fellow, 2024 National Council Reimagining Communities Fellow, 2025 L4BL Summer School Fellow, legal professional, avid gardener, and authentic Aries.
Dawn is co-founder and serves as Executive Leader of Operation Liberation – a Black queer led and centered grassroots non-profit whose work is rooted in abolition, includes bail and legal support, mutual aid, and culturally competent care for justice impacted community. Dawn is co-founder of Freedom House Collective, a co-created incubator space, safehouse, and political home for the collaboration and development of Black creatives, grassroots organizers and abolitionists in the KC metro, as well as co-founder of KC’s first and only Black Queer Leadership Collective, a collaborative container co-designed with local Black queer founders to create more space for Black queer/trans leadership in the KC metro and beyond, and serves on the board of the Missouri Justice Coalition, empowering formerly incarcerated community and loved ones to expose and disrupt the violence of mass incarceration.
Dawn has had the honor and privilege of training at the historic Highlander Movement School’s Cultural Organizing 101 (2024) and 201 (2025) trainings, Mass Liberation Network’s Black Intensive Grounding training (2024), is an active member of L4BL, Mass Liberation Network, The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women & Girls and the NAACP. Dawn hopes to help build a world where cages aren’t actively being built for her grandchildren.
Executive Director of Witness to Innocence, has firsthand experience of the suffering brought on by wrongful conviction as he, like all the members of WTI, endured the trauma of being an innocent person sentenced to death. In 2006, he was wrongfully convicted and spent three years on Florida’s death row before being exonerated by a unanimous verdict from the Florida Supreme Court which ruled in July 2009 that there wasn’t enough evidence to find Herman guilty of anything, much less sentence him to death, and that he did not receive a fair trial.
Soon after his exoneration, Herman joined his fellow death row exonerees in their work to abolish the death penalty and advocate for criminal legal reforms. He credits WTI with helping him to navigate life after the traumatic experience of wrongful incarceration on death row. Herman remained in Florida, received his B.A. in Legal Studies, and worked with at-risk youth. He served five years on WTI’s board, including most recently as Board Secretary. Herman also serves on the Board of Directors of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, on the Advisory Committee of Equal Justice USA, and was an Ambassador for Represent Justice.
A dedicated advocate for those who still suffer on death rows, Herman speaks throughout the US and internationally. During the COVID 19 pandemic, to make sure this advocacy continued when in-person speaking was not possible, he created WTI’s online show “Cruel Justice,” hosting speakers on abolition and criminal legal reform. Herman is also a panelist for WTI’s Accuracy and Justice workshops where exonerees engage in facilitated conversations with prosecutors, law enforcement personnel, public defenders, judges and other criminal legal practitioners to help reduce wrongful convictions. He is a steady presence whenever death penalty or wrongful conviction legislation is looming, making sure those in power hear from people who will be directly impacted by their decisions. Advocating for innocent people like himself who are still on death rows throughout the US, Herman has said to those in authority “The problem comes in when people that have the power to correct a mistake don’t take the responsibility to correct it. Put your pride down and say, ‘I’m not going to worry about my reputation.’ Because guess what? Your reputation will be greater if you find out this person was innocent, and you saved his life.”
Herman is the 135th person to have been exonerated from death row since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S. in 1976, and the 23rd person to be exonerated from death row in Florida, which has the highest rate of exonerations from death row of any state in the nation. In his new role as Executive Director, Herman looks forward to working together with his fellow exonerees and WTI allies in a team effort to abolish the death penalty and achieve meaningful criminal legal reforms.
J. Atif Davis is an incarcerated advocate who at the age of 17 was given a sentence that was meant to throw him away and strip him of his humanity. Over the past three decades of his incarceration, Atif has proven to be a mentor, leader, and worthwhile human being. More on Atif and his work soon to come.