Ivan Teleguz

Ivan Teleguz was born in 1978 in the small town of Kamyanka, then part of the Soviet Union and now in Western Ukraine.

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After suffering years of intense religious persecution for their Christian faith, Mr Teleguz’s family was forced to flee their homeland, ultimately settling in the USA. Mr Teleguz never applied for US citizenship, and remains a proud Ukrainian.

In 2006, Mr Teleguz was convicted and sentenced to death for hiring two other men, Hetrick and Gilkes to kill a former girlfriend.  Since then, new information has come to light suggesting that he is innocent.

Jurors who convicted Mr Teleguz were never told significant information exonerating Mr Teleguz and implicating others.  Since the trial, the prosecution’s lead witnesses, Safanov and Gilkes, have both come forward to admit that they lied in court when they implicated Mr Teleguz in the murder.  

Gilkes admitted that he fabricated his testimony at trial, under pressure from the state and in order to receive a lesser sentence. He now says he has no reason to believe that Mr Teleguz hired Hetrick to kill the victim. Safanov recanted his testimony and admitted that Mr Teleguz never told him about the murder.  The state’s third main witness, Hetrick, has repeatedly refused to speak with Mr Teleguz’s attorneys.   

Mr Teleguz is now on Virginia’s death row and fighting to correct the erroneous convictions that resulted from the omission of this critical evidence.  The conditions are harsh and isolating.  He is restricted to a single, concrete cell with a solid steel door for almost 24 hours a day; prison regulations require him to eat all meals alone in his cell, and he is taken from his cell only to shower and to spend occasional one-hour periods outside in a single, small cage.

The Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, Nina Karpachova, first became involved in August 2010.  In contravention of the Vienna Convention of Consular Relations, Ukraine was not notified that of Mr. Teleguz’s arrest; there is no consular record of such a notification being provided, either orally or in writing. 

Mr Teleguz is running out of time and is in desperate need of more assistance from the Ukrainian government.