COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Six of Ohio's nine death-row exonerees appeared together for the first time on Tuesday, lobbying lawmakers at the Ohio Statehouse for reforms -- if not an outright end -- to the state's capital punishment system.

The six presented themselves as living examples of how arbitrary and flawed the death-penalty system is, and many said their goal now is to ensure no one else has to endure the hell they went through.

"What happened to me happened - you can't change that," said Ricky Jackson, a Cleveland man who spent 39 years behind bars for a murder he didn't commit. "So the best thing that I can do is try to prevent it from happening to somebody else."

Another Cleveland man, Joe D'Ambrosio, was on death row for 22 years before his release in 2012. D'Ambrosio said he had no criminal record before his arrest and was convicted because the court took another defendant's word over his.

"I'm the most common Joe that there can be," D'Ambrosio said. "And if it can happen to me, it can happen to you, or your children, or your grandchildren. The system is broken."

The six exonerees were there at the request of Ohioans To Stop Executions.

The Columbus-based anti-death penalty group is pushing lawmakers to adopt a number of recommendations offered last year by the Ohio Supreme Court's death-penalty task force, including:

Allowing the death penalty in cases in which the crime is proved via DNA evidence, a filmed confession, or other video footage;

Prohibiting the death sentence when the state relies only on jailhouse informant testimony;

Creating a panel under the Ohio attorney general that would have to approve death penalty charges before cases proceed, paying particular attention to racial factors.

D'Ambrosio said if these reforms were in place when he was arrested, he likely would have never ended up on death row.

Jackson, for one, was awarded an initial payment of more than $1 million last month for his wrongful imprisonment. But when asked whether any amount of money would be adequate compensation for their time on death row, he and other exonerees immediately shook their heads.

Kwame Ajamu, who was convicted along with Jackson of murdering a Cleveland businessman in 1975, said all of them have a "gap" in their lives because of the time they spent behind bars.

When Ajamu went to prison, he said, one of his nieces was 5 years old. When he was released, he said, he was shocked to see she was a 45-year-old woman.

In prison, Ajamu said, "Time, in your mind and your heart, stops."