PASSAGE ONE OF THE DAY: "James Dailey and Paul Skalnik couldn’t have been more different. Before Boggio’s murder, Dailey had a single conviction on his record, relating to a bar fight. Skalnik’s rap sheet runs for miles. From fraud to grand larceny to child sexual assault, he has left a trail of deceit and destruction stretching back to the 1970s. He has been married at least eight times, has falsely claimed to be a Homeland Security agent and a terminally ill cancer patient and has defrauded people out of tens of thousands of dollars. Some of his crimes exposed him to decades behind bars. As early as 1985, two years before his testimony sent Dailey to death row, the Florida Department of Corrections called him a “con artist of the highest degree.” Yet while Dailey faces execution, Skalnik is a free man. Why? Because, according to Colloff’s investigation, Skalnik is “one of the most prolific, and most effective, jailhouse informants in American history.”
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Of the 367 DNA-based exonerations on record, one in five involved testimony from a jailhouse informant. A 2004 study found that snitch testimony was the leading cause of wrongful conviction in death-penalty cases.It’s hard to gather more precise data on the use of informants, because prosecutors don’t keep such records, which puts defendants, and jurors, at a disadvantage. How are you supposed to judge the credibility of an informant’s testimony if you aren’t told that he has been feeding similar stories to prosecutors for years? And how are you supposed to weigh the break he gets from prosecutors if they don’t give it to him until after the trial?"
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COMMENTARY: "Will Florida kill an innocent man?," by Jesse Wegman, published by The Sun Sentinel on December 30, 2019. (Jesse Wegman is a member of The New York Times Editorial Board, where he has written about the Supreme Court and national legal affairs since 2013.)
PHOTO CAPTION: "James Dailey is a decorated Air Force veteran who served three tours in Vietnam, arriving at the height of the Tet Offensive. He had only one civilian conviction, for a bar brawl, on his record. He is one of two men convicted of savagely murdering a 14-year-old girl at Indian Rocks Beach in 1985. In October, a federal judge issued a temporary stay of Dailey’s execution that expires on Monday. His co-defendant, who now says he alone did the crime, is serving life in prison. Dailey maintains he’s innocent."
GIST: "For
more than three decades, James Dailey, a Vietnam War veteran, has been
sitting on Florida’s death row, condemned to die for the brutal 1985
murder of a teenager named Shelly Boggio.
In
October, a federal judge issued a temporary stay of Dailey’s execution.
As soon as the stay expires, on Monday (December 30, 2019 HL) , Gov. Ron DeSantis can schedule a
date to have him put to death. What Florida officials have so far refused to acknowledge — and what is documented in an infuriating in-depth investigation by Pamela Colloff for The New York Times Magazine and ProPublica — is that Dailey, 73, is almost certainly innocent. In
fact, the local authorities in Pinellas County, on Florida’s Gulf
Coast, first prosecuted someone else for Boggio’s murder — a housemate
of Dailey’s named Jack Pearcy. Pearcy had a history of arrests for
violence against women, was the last person to see Boggio alive and
admitted to the police that he stabbed her — not fatally, he claimed Pearcy
was found guilty, and the jury sentenced him to life in prison. That
should have been the end of the matter, but Boggio’s murder had
convulsed Pinellas County, and prosecutors there faced intense pressure
to make sure someone paid the ultimate price for it. That’s
where Dailey comes in. He acknowledged having met Boggio on the night
of her murder, but he denied killing her, and no direct evidence linked
him to the crime. So how did he end up on death row? Largely on the word
of one man, Paul Skalnik, a jailhouse informant who told a jury in
compelling detail how Dailey had confessed to him. Jailhouse
informants are some of the more elusive creatures of the criminal
justice system — cycling in and out of jail, always seeming to find
themselves in the right place when another inmate decides to unburden
himself and confess his crimes to a total stranger. They can help
destroy an innocent man’s life, and yet there is virtually no mechanism
within the system to hold them, or the prosecutors who quietly use them,
accountable.
For
more than three decades, James Dailey, a Vietnam War veteran, has been
sitting on Florida’s death row, condemned to die for the brutal 1985
murder of a teenager named Shelly Boggio. He maintains his innocence.
James
Dailey and Paul Skalnik couldn’t have been more different. Before
Boggio’s murder, Dailey had a single conviction on his record, relating
to a bar fight. Skalnik’s rap sheet runs for miles. From fraud to grand
larceny to child sexual assault, he has left a trail of deceit and
destruction stretching back to the 1970s. He has been married at least
eight times, has falsely claimed to be a Homeland Security agent and a
terminally ill cancer patient and has defrauded people out of tens of
thousands of dollars. Some of his crimes exposed him to decades behind
bars. As early as 1985, two years before his testimony sent Dailey to
death row, the Florida Department of Corrections called him a “con
artist of the highest degree.” Yet
while Dailey faces execution, Skalnik is a free man. Why? Because,
according to Colloff’s investigation, Skalnik is “one of the most
prolific, and most effective, jailhouse informants in American history.”
For decades, he worked hand in hand with Florida prosecutors and law
enforcement officials, trading dramatic but suspiciously similar tales
of jailhouse confessions for his own freedom. In
1982, he was charged with sexually assaulting a child, a crime that
could have led to 15 years in prison. The case was strong, and the
victim, a 12-year-old girl, was prepared to testify. But officials
didn’t prosecute him for the crime. Instead, he pleaded no contest to a
separate and far less serious charge of grand theft — and he served his
sentence not in the state prison but in the Pinellas County jail, where
he could continue working as an informant. In
one six-year stretch in the 1980s, Skalnik testified or gave
information in at least 37 cases in Pinellas County alone, many
involving murder charges. Most of those cases ended in convictions or
plea deals, and four of the defendants were sentenced to death. “Together, we never lost a case,” Skalnik once wrote to a judge. Being
a jailhouse informant is a good gig, if you can get it. Just about
everyone who’s been locked up is aware of the benefits that come from
snitching — sentences reduced, charges dropped. For the same reason,
inmates quickly learn to steer clear of known informants like Skalnik,
who often wind up in cells next to people who are awaiting trial. Skalnik
always denied that he was promised any sort of leniency for his
testimony. But over and over again, he provided critical testimony in a
murder case, and then, sometimes days later, his own sentence would be
reduced or his prosecution would magically disappear. Just five days
after Dailey was sentenced to death, Skalnik was released from jail for
his assistance, even though he was facing a 20-year sentence of his own,
and even though his parole officer had warned the year before that he
“is and always will be a danger to society.” The
problem isn’t simply that Skalnik is an inveterate criminal, or that he
repeatedly got special treatment from the authorities. It’s that, as is
the case with many serial jailhouse informants, his incentive to tell
stories that prosecutors wanted to hear was far greater than his
incentive to tell the truth. And that has led to great injustices, like
the one Dailey is living out. Of the 367 DNA-based exonerations on record, one in five involved testimony from a jailhouse informant. A 2004 study found that snitch testimony was the leading cause of wrongful conviction in death-penalty cases. It’s
hard to gather more precise data on the use of informants, because
prosecutors don’t keep such records, which puts defendants, and jurors,
at a disadvantage. How are you supposed to judge the credibility of an
informant’s testimony if you aren’t told that he has been feeding
similar stories to prosecutors for years? And how are you supposed to
weigh the break he gets from prosecutors if they don’t give it to him
until after the trial? Some
states and cities have worked to rein in or regulate the use of
informants. In Florida, where 29 death-row inmates have been exonerated —
more than anywhere else in the country — the State Supreme Court
instituted a rule in 2014 requiring prosecutors to reveal any deals made
with informants. It was a good idea, but it was undercut by the fact
that prosecutors rarely make explicit promises of leniency before trial.
Across the country, there are virtually no consequences for prosecutors
who rely on jailhouse informants, no matter how unreliable their
testimony turns out to be. In
response to Colloff’s investigation, Florida officials insisted that
Skalnik was never offered any deal for his testimony. And yet Skalnik
himself has disputed this. In 1988, after prosecutors for once decided
not to grant him leniency, he alleged that he’d been coached on how to
testify in a convincing way and how to persuade jurors that he wasn’t
getting any deal in return. Pinellas County prosecutors denied these
claims, calling Skalnik a liar even as they claimed that all of his
testimony was on the level. Dailey,
for his part, says he never talked to Skalnik. On Friday, Dailey’s
lawyers filed with the court a declaration by Jack Pearcy, currently
serving a life sentence, that he alone was responsible for Shelly
Boggio’s murder — the second time that he has admitted to the crime
under penalty of perjury. “James Dailey was back at the house when I
drove Shelly Boggio to the place where I ultimately killed her,”
Pearcy’s declaration said. The
victims here are not just people like Dailey, whose life is on the
line, but also the countless people who suffered because of Skalnik’s
own crimes — the children he abused, the people he defrauded. And
Skalnik shouldn’t be the only one considered a criminal in this case.
So should the Florida law enforcement authorities who knowingly used him
for their own ends for years, repeatedly putting him back on the street
where he was able to do more damage. At the very least, they should be
held to account for their reckless reliance on the word of a man who has
spent his life telling lies. Not
all prosecutors abuse the system in this way, of course, and most would
tell you they are genuinely convinced of the guilt of all of their
defendants. But when the pressure to find a killer is so great, when the
win-at-all-costs mentality is so powerful, the line between acting on a
good-faith belief and cutting corners to score a conviction can blur. The
rank injustice of cases like James Dailey’s provides yet another
reason, as if more were needed, that the death penalty must be
abolished. As
the last days of Dailey’s stay of execution run out, DeSantis has shown
no interest in revisiting the case. “This has been litigated over and
over and over, and so at some point, you need to do justice,” he said. He is right — if not in the way he thinks. The power to do that justice is in his hands."
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/editorials/fl-op-edit-nyt-james-dailey-execution-wrong-
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.""
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
20191230-gqdpvy3q4zgatdf6yvjrel6luy-story.html
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