PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Some judges in Broward are applying the new law to murders committed before the law changed. That should be unconstitutional. Instead of making the death penalty easier to impose, lawmakers should repeal it. They should also order a study of why so many innocent people are framed. The cases of Cure and DuBoise are textbook examples of how easily Florida justice generates “imperfect” results. Compensation for survivors is justified, but no possible atonement if an innocent person is murdered."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: In Florida’s legal minefield of appellate technicalities and procedural traps, Cure and DuBoise exhausted their appeals years ago and would still be in prison but for the state attorneys who created conviction review units. Only four others exist, in Orlando, Jacksonville, West Palm Beach and Miami. The Legislature should require every circuit to have one. Otherwise, more “imperfect” results are certain, with no recourse to justice for most wrongfully convicted Floridians."
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EDITORIAL: The tragic consequences of wrongful imprisonment,' published by The South Florida Sun Sentinel Editorial Board on May 13, 2023. (The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson.)
GIST: "The Legislature acknowledges that the state’s system of justice yielded an imperfect result that had tragic consequences … “ From the text of Florida Senate Bill 8 and SB 62.
"That phrase is from the Florida Legislature’s standard and all too frequent apology to citizens imprisoned, sometimes on death row, for crimes they did not commit.
It happens too often for anyone to believe that Florida does enough to prevent something so horrific.
The National Registry of Exonerations lists 85 wrongly convicted Floridians, 13 from Broward alone, more than any other Florida county.
No one knows how many others have been unable to prove their innocence. All but a few of those 85 spent time, often many years, in prison. Thirty were on death row.
One week before adjourning its 2023 session, the Legislature voted to give $817,000 to Leonard Cure, a Broward man who sacrificed 16 years of his life in prison for a robbery he did not commit, and $1.5 million to Robert DuBoise of Tampa, who was locked away nearly 37 years, three on Death Row, for rape and murder before DNA eventually exonerated him and implicated others.
Payments of $50,000 a year
Florida’s established rate for wrongful incarceration is $50,000 per year.
That’s what one year of freedom is worth.
Earlier convictions made both Cure and DuBoise ineligible for automatic compensation.
Legislation to erase that unfair “clean hands” exclusion cleared the Senate unanimously but died without a House vote. There’s more interest in executing more people, guilty or not.
One new law
Some judges in Broward are applying the new law to murders committed before the law changed. That should be unconstitutional.
Instead of making the death penalty easier to impose, lawmakers should repeal it. They should also order a study of why so many innocent people are framed.
The cases of Cure and DuBoise are textbook examples of how easily Florida justice generates “imperfect” results.
Compensation for survivors is justified, but no possible atonement if an innocent person is murdered.
Former Florida Chief Justice Gerald Kogan said he thought that happened to three people, but did not name names.
A life, barely spared
DuBoise might have been long dead but for a split Florida Supreme Court decision that reduced his death sentence to life.
In 1988, Kogan was one of four justices who voted to spare him because the sentencing judge, known as “Hanging Harry” Coe, overrode a jury’s unanimous recommendation of life.
The court has repudiated its long-standing practice of reviewing death sentences for proportionality.
If a jury and judge condemn too harshly, the court won’t intervene.
Neither will the governor.
There hasn’t been an executive commutation since 1983 — more reasons to repeal the death penalty.
DuBoise was convicted by highly questionable bite-mark testimony and by the perjury of a jailhouse informant whose own sentence, in an unrelated case, was reduced after his testimony.
The informant’s conjectured account of what DuBoise had admitted was totally refuted by the eventual DNA testing, which the state had tried to prevent.
It found DNA from two other men who had no connection to DuBoise.
Hillsborough County’s conviction review unit, working with the Innocence Project on the case, strongly recommended DuBoise be released and exonerated.
The report said that the “bite marks” on the victim were likely injury of a different sort.
It wasn’t the first Florida case in which DNA gave the lie to a jailhouse snitch.
According to the Innocence Project, it has happened in 17% of DNA-based exonerations nationwide.
Florida should never allow anyone to be convicted, much less condemned to die, solely on the word of a jailed informant.
Sloppy police work
Sloppy police work tainted Cure’s case.
The Florida Senate’s special master, reporting on the findings of the Broward state attorney’s conviction review unit, said he lost his freedom because Broward deputies showed only his picture to the witnesses of a robbery at a Walgreens in Dania Beach, even though police had not identified Cure as a suspect.
The deputy who chose Cure’s picture said it was because a witness described the robber as “neat.”
When the two witnesses tentatively identified Cure, the deputies clinched it with improperly suggestive photo lineups showing multiple pictures of him and no one else. He was sentenced to life.
The Broward conviction review unit also found “undisputed evidence of an alibi,” including an ATM receipt showing Cure more than three miles away at the time of the crime and testimony that he was at work a few minutes later.
He was on foot, with no car.
The entire editorial can be read at:
\https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2023/05/13/the-tragic-consequences-of-wrongful-imprisonment-editorial/
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
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