Science Shows Jacksonville Man’s Innocence After 21 Years

For Immediate Release

Science Shows Jacksonville Man’s Innocence After 21 Years

Billy Joe Holton could become 2nd Man Exonerated from Duval County in Two Years

The Innocence Project of Florida (IPF) last week filed a Motion for a New Trial on behalf of Billy Joe Holton after DNA results revealed another man’s semen on the State’s key piece of evidence. If the motion is successful, Holton will become the nation’s 233rd DNA exoneree.

“These DNA results show that there was another man’s semen on the blanket used to cover the victim while she was raped,” said Seth Miller, Executive Director of IPF. “Since the victim said she had not had sex in six months and that she washed her blanket once a week, this means that the semen on the blanket could only come from the perpetrator.”

Holton and his former co-defendant Tim Smith were charged with raping a Jacksonville woman in the presence of her seven year-old son. The men became suspects after a jailhouse snitch implicated them in the crime. Holton was indicted with this crime despite the fact that the victim’s son repeatedly told police that Holton was not one of the perpetrators and that the victim told others she could not identify her attackers.

“The victim’s eventual photo ID of Holton was dubious considering that she was covered in the blanket throughout the attack, she had told her neighbor she did not get a good look at the men, and her own son told police that Holton was not the man who hurt his mom,” said IPF Staff Attorney Bobbi Madonna. “The DNA results from the blanket now prove what we suspected all along—Holton is actually innocent of this crime.”

On the eve of trial, the jailhouse snitch disappeared. The State, faced with having to drop the charges, offered Smith a sweetheart deal—testify against Holton and receive a reduced sentence. Smith, facing multiple life sentences if convicted, decided to take the deal.

“Smith had originally planned on putting on an alibi defense before agreeing to testify against Holton,” explained Miller. “Holton received three consecutive life sentences while Smith received time served. This is just another reason to trust science over testimony in a case where the witness has everything to gain.”

IPF called on the State Attorney’s office to work with them to see that justice is done. “We have exonerative DNA evidence, and it is our hope that the State will partner with us to bring an end to Mr. Holton’s wrongful incarceration,” said Miller.

The Innocence Project of Florida (IPF) is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to finding and freeing innocent people in Florida prisons. IPF and Jacksonville criminal defense attorney William Sheppard represented Billy Joe Holton to obtain his DNA testing and continue to represent him to achieve his release from prison.

# # #

Visit IPF's Website here; sign up to volunteer here; contribute to our work here.

False Confessions: Why Aren't We Taking Steps to Prevent Them?

Last Saturday’s Omaha World-Herald asks:

How could so many people admit in vivid detail to a horrendous crime that they didn't commit?

That was the question after the Central Park 5.

After the Norfolk 4.

And now, the Beatrice 6.

The murder case out of Beatrice, Neb., in which six people were wrongfully convicted in 1989 of the slaying of a 68-year-old woman, is a new national record for the most people exonerated in one case by DNA evidence.

Until this case, the record was held by the Central Park 5. Surely you remember that case: In April of 1989, a white female jogger was reportedly gang-raped by a group of juveniles who, incidentally, were black. Five of the boys (ranging in age from 14 – 16) confessed, were sentenced and served time in prison. Once the boys confessed, it was all over for them. As we mentioned in a previous blog post, “confession acts as the strongest piece of evidence that outweighs any reasonable evidence to the contrary.” Juries often find confessions so compelling, they consider other parts of the trial incidental. It turned out that one Matias Reyes was identified as the rapist through DNA testing, and he confessed to acting alone.

In the case of the Norfolk Four, four young sailors falsely confessed to raping and murdering a young woman in her Norfolk, VA, apartment. “Soon after the trial, the four men recanted and claimed that their admissions were coerced through the threat of the death penalty.” Later DNA testing proved that another man, acting alone, committed the crime. Unfortunately, three of the four remain in prison, serving life sentences without chance for parole. As recently as November 26th, Gov. Kaine has stated that their original confessions are the biggest roadblock to his pardoning them.

But they're asking for a whole series of confessions, and I can't give you the number, but 15 or 20 that were given at different points in time by different people, to all be discarded. That is a huge request.

Perhaps someone should tell Governor Kaine that, according to the Innocence Project, “In approximately 25% of the wrongful convictions overturned with DNA evidence, defendants made false confessions, admissions or statements to law enforcement officials.”

In Florida’s earliest DNA case, Jerry Frank Townsend, who is mentally retarded with the mental capacity of an eight year old, was convicted of six murders and one rape and sentenced to seven concurrent life sentences. In 1979, Townsend was arrested for raping a pregnant woman in Miami, Florida. During the investigation, he confessed to other murders. The confessions were largely the consequence of Townsend wanting to please authority figures, a common adaptive practice by someone with his mental capacities. Police took Townsend to murder scenes and recorded his confessions. Townsend was ultimately cleared by DNA and released on June 15, 2001. He had spent twenty-two years in prison. Read more about Townsend’s case here.

But back to the Beatrice 6. While experts say the case seems to fit patterns of other cases (although not necessarily the Norfolk Four), “young people with low-esteem or mental problems who were abusing alcohol or drugs,” the case had a particularly unsettling addition -- a police psychologist who played a role in the interrogations has previously served as private therapist to some of the defendants. According to the World-Herald, “Saul Kassin, a professor of psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City and co-author of Confessions in the Courtroom, and Richard Leo, a law professor at the University of San Francisco said that a psychologist acting in the dual role of trusted therapist and criminal interrogator would have had a powerful place of trust and persuasion over suspects.” Apparently so powerful that only one of the Beatrice 6 defendants refused to confess.

An attorney for one of the six said recently, "I'm fully convinced now that the police, if they wanted to, could get any borderline personality person, who has alcohol and drug issues, and scare them to death and get them to confess to anything."

We know why the police do it. Confessions are, as expert Kassin says, the “gold standard” in criminal trials. But how do they do it? And what can be done to prevent even more false confesstions?

We'll look at some of the answers to these questions in our next post.

*Some of the information in this post was taken from “The False Confessions in the Central Park Jogger Case” written by Elaine Cassel and published on December 17, 2002, at Findlaw.

Visit IPF's Website here; sign up to volunteer here; contribute to our work here.

If 1 in 100 American adults are in prison, how many are innocent?

The United States has passed a milestone with, apparently, very little fanfare. We now incarcerate more than 1 in 100 adults in this country -- 1 in 99.1 to be exact. Let's repeat that. 1 in 99.1 American adults are currently in prison or jail.

The numbers were released last week in a report by The Public Safety Performance Project:

Launched in 2006 as an operating project of the Pew Center on the States, the Public Safety Performance Project helps states advance fiscally sound, data-driven sentencing and corrections policies and practices that protect public safety, hold offenders accountable and control costs. The Project currently collaborates with the Pew Center on the States and five external partners to provide expert, nonpartisan information and assistance to 13 states that want a better return on their public safety investments.

Why isn't the media all over this report? Yes, there have been the obligatory stories on the data, but that flurry of attention was over in a day or two. Am I the only one who thinks this is one of the scariest pieces of news to hit the media (albeit briefly) in a long time? The United States, "land of the free, and the home of the brave," incarcerates a much higher percentage of our population than any other country in the world.

The sheer numbers alone are staggering:

At the start of the new year, the American penal system held more than 2.3 million adults. China was second, with 1.5 million people behind bars, and Russia was a distant third with 890,000 inmates, according to the latest available figures.

When you break the numbers down into demographics, they look even worse (if possible). While "one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, the figure is one in nine for black males in that age group... In addition, one in every 53 adults in their 20s is behind bars...."

This "lock 'em up" mentality doesn't come cheap. We're currently spending about $55 billion a year to house the 2.3 million people currently behind bars in this country. And ironically, it's not necessarily making us any safer.

"For all the money spent on corrections today, there hasn’t been a clear and convincing return for public safety,” said Adam Gelb, director of the Public Safety Performance Project. “More and more states are beginning to rethink their reliance on prisons for lower-level offenders and finding strategies that are tough on crime without being so tough on taxpayers.”

One can only hope that "more and more states are beginning to rethink their reliance on prisons." You don't get that sense from the report's numbers, however. Thirty-six states and the federal government saw an increase in their prison populations in 2007, including Florida, whose incarcerated population grew by more than 4,000 inmates. According to the state's Department of Corrections web site, "On June 30, 2007, 493 of every 100,000 Floridians were incarcerated compared to 453 in 2003." (That figure is for prisons only, and does not include those behind bars in local jails around the state.)

Florida currently spends 9.3% of its general fund on the state's correctional system. Only three other states' percentages are that high or more. To put these numbers in perspective, consider this: for every dollar Florida spent on higher education in 2007, the state spent $.66 on corrections. Contrast that figure with 1987, when the ratio was $.34 per $1.00.

Between 1993 and 2007, the state’s inmate population has increased from 53,000 to over 97,000. While crime and a growing resident population play a role, most of the growth, analysts agree, stemmed from a host of correctional policies and practices adopted by the state.

One of the first came in 1995, when the legislature abolished “good time” credits and discretionary release by the parole board, and required that all prisoners—regardless of their crime, prior record, or risk to recidivate—serve 85 percent of their sentence. Next came a “zero tolerance” policy and other measures mandating that probation officers report every offender who violated any condition of supervision and increasing prison time for these “technical violations.” As a result, the number of violators in Florida prisons has jumped by an estimated 12,000.

Crime in Florida has dropped substantially during this period, but it has fallen as much or more in some states that have not grown their prison systems, or even have shrunk them, such as New York. Without a change of direction, Florida is expected to reach a peak of nearly 125,000 inmates by 2013. Based on that projection, the state will run out of prison capacity by early 2009 and will need to add another 16,500 beds to keep pace.

So what does all of this have to do with the Innocence Project of Florida? Well the first thing I thought of is how many of these incarcerated people are innocent?

If Florida currently houses over 97,000 inmates, then we have to assume that, at the very least (one percent), 970 of them are innocent. On the high end (an estimated ten percent), that number jumps to 9,700. Since 2000, Florida has released just nine innocent people due to DNA testing.

One thing this work has taught me is that there is a critical need to investigate claims of innocence in this state, indeed in this country. I'm well aware that a lot of people will be quick to say, "Oh, yeah, everybody in prison is innocent," but the hard truth is that there are innocent people in prison and a very real need for more people working to do something about it. According to Samuel R. Gross, a law professor at the University of Michigan:

The good news is that the great majority of convicted defendants in the United States are guilty; the bad news is that a substantial number are not. Is an error rate of 2% or 3% or 5% high or low? That depends on your point of view and your purpose.

If 1% of commercial airliners crashed on takeoff, we'd shut down every airline in the country. That would be nearly 300 crashes a day. If as few as 1% of criminal convictions are erroneous, right now there are more than 20,000 innocent defendants behind bars.

Another thing I've learned is that wrongful incarceration is still not on everyone's radar. Innocence projects haven't been around long enough to lay claim to a colored ribbon to increase awareness of our cause, like breast cancer's pink one or the Heart Association's red. And criminal justice issues, like prison reform and innocence projects, don't generate the same warm, fuzzy response as a homeless child or an abused puppy, but that doesn't make the work any less important. We communicate daily with real people, perhaps someone's teacher, or neighbor, or son or brother, whose lives, and the lives of their families, have been devastated by a wrongful conviction and its resulting incarceration. The damage can endure for generations.

Unfortunately, Florida does not yet have statewide remedies in place, changes to "the old way of doing things" that have proven to be effective in protecting innocent citizens from falling victim to the horrors of wrongful incarceration. I remain hopeful that the situation will change as more people become aware of this nightmare that can truly happen to anyone.

Florida, like most of the country, has its work cut out for it as it seeks to right some of the wrongs within its criminal justice system. Protecting innocent Floridians from wrongful imprisonment should be high on that list.

Link to the complete report.

A Moral Debt As Yet Unpaid

Here's an op-ed piece from Louisiana that, with a few name changes, applies just as well to the situation here in Florida. Innocent people who've spent years incarcerated for crimes they did not commit are not getting compensated. And the "lucky" ones, the ones who do receive some compensation amount, usually do so only after spending years fighting for it.

In Florida, where Alan Crotzer will be trying for the third time to get our legislature to compensate him for the 24 years, 6 months and 13 days that he spent behind bars for a crime someone else committed, one wonders where is the moral compass guiding our lawmakers? Are they so afraid of appearing soft on crime that they avoid doing the right thing for those found innocent of crimes, as if the association with crime itself is too close?

If our representatives and senators were truly concerned about crime, they would be outraged at the injustices perpetrated when innocents are locked up and, coincidentally, the guilty are left free to commit more crimes. Freeing (and compensating) the innocent is not being soft on crime. It is instead being wedded to the truth, the simple truth that innocent people do not belong behind bars, period. It is what we do when we discover those instances where mistakes were made, and how we treat the victims of those mistakes, that add to our measure as a civilized society.

The Shreveport Times, January 27, 2008 -- "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.—" The Rev. Theodore Parker, 19th century minister and abolitionist

There are those who deserve to be in prison and sometimes there are those who just don't belong there. I am always particularly moved when innocent men are released from prison. I am, however, always saddened that they spent one day behind bars. It's refreshing on one hand that eventually the system allows exoneration, but depressing on the other hand that the system sometimes incarcerates the innocent.

Rickey Johnson spent nearly 26 years in one of America's bloodiest and notorious prisons for a rape he knew he didn't commit. Of course, no one beyond his closest friends and relatives believed him because everyone locked up says they didn't do it. Not Rickey Johnson. He spent almost three decades in a place where he didn't belong paying a debt to society he didn't owe. Thanks to DNA evidence he has been released. He is now a free man.

How does this continue to happen? No one is dare suggesting the criminal justice system come to a grinding halt or that a moratorium be placed on all harsh sentences. But, the process of justice must be reviewed to include all avenues of proving innocence. Of course, the legal standard is "innocent until proven guilty," but once a defendant is in a courtroom, the opposite is usually true.

A young man with potential was wrongly identified and sentenced to spend the rest of his life as a number. While he stresses he isn't bitter it would be understandable. If he truly isn't bitter he's a better man than most. At some point his cause certainly seemed hopeless and perhaps he had resigned himself to live out his existence on "The Farm." To call what happened to Rickey Johnson and others like him across America a "miscarriage of justice" is an understatement. It is good to know that groups like the Innocence Project are fighting to show there are flaws in the system.

Continue reading.

Waiting for the State to do the Right Thing

Associated Press, Published January 21, 2008, TALLAHASSEE - Alan Crotzer is working at a landscaping company, hoping one day to be compensated for the 24 years he spent in prison for a rape he didn't commit.

Florida lawmakers have for a couple of years failed to pass a bill to pay him - and he's again asking the Legislature for $1.25-million for the two decades of freedom he gave up.

It's too bad for Crotzer that he doesn't live somewhere else. Several states have automatic compensation for people who have been wrongfully imprisoned and then released - something that's happening more and more because of increasing use of DNA to prove innocence.

But Florida remains one of 28 states that don't guarantee compensation for those who spent precious years behind bars for something they didn't do. Nine men have been freed by DNA in Florida in recent years, but only one has received money.

Crotzer, 47, is seeking money for himself - but he'd rather the state make money available for anyone in his situation. He said most men released after years behind bars - especially those who were, like him, young when imprisoned - have a hard time starting over without help. They're usually broke, and most have no job prospects. All they really know is prison life.

Continue reading.

Improve compensation laws

The following editorial from a Louisiana newspaper could have been written (with only the name and case facts changed) by any of a number of papers in states across the country. Even though the federal government passed legislation in 2004 that encourages all states to have laws compensating their wrongly imprisoned citizens, only 22 have so far followed through.

The Shreveport Times, January 20, 2008 -- Rickey Johnson's release from prison after 25 years puts him in the category of nine other Louisianans who were exonerated of crimes for which they were wrongly imprisoned.

Johnson, of Leesville, was officially cleared of the aggravated rape charge of which he was convicted in 1983. The photo in which Johnson was identified was eight years old. He was convicted of the rape in January 1983 and sentenced to life without parole.

According to the Innocence Project, eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions, a factor in 75 percent of the 212 DNA exonerations nationwide.

The Innocence Project, established in 1992, uses DNA testing technology and the help of law students to review past criminal trials to determine if accused individuals were convicted under false pretenses.

But what's next for Johnson? "I can never get back what I lost and I'm not going to try. I'm just going to focus on the future," he said.

Confronting an ever-changing world after serving years in prison can be challenging at best. Social skills diminished by countless years in prison don't translate well in the outside world. And what about job skills? And education?

No amount of money can get back what was lost by serving a quarter of a century in prison for something that he didn't do. Certainly a system that robbed Johnson of a significant part of his life owes him more than a get-out-of-jail-free pass. But it's a start.

Although in Louisiana, it's happening rarely, with compensation awarded to only two of the 10 men who have been exonerated by the Innocence Project.

Continue reading.

NOTE: Although Louisiana has a compensation law on the books, it currently pays only $15,000 per year of wrongful incarceration with a cap of $150,000. That's well below the federal standard of $50,000 per year ($100,000 for death row cases).

Of course it's still better than Florida where exonerees must go to the state capitol (without benefit of a bill on the books) and beseech the legislature for compensation in the form of an individual claims bill. Ask Alan Crotzer what that's like; he's made the trip for two years straight and is set to return, hat in hand, for a third round of pleading.

It's a disgraceful and humiliating exercise that should embarrass every legislator in Tallahassee. When the State has robbed a man of more than half his life, it's rather unsettling to realize that the victim must then spend years begging said State to do the right thing. Maybe this detestable dance explains why, of Florida's nine exonerees, only Wilton Dedge has so far been paid.

NEWS REPORT: DNA Testing on Hair Could Have Proved Innocence But Trial Attorney Refused Testing Due to . . . Cost?

Esdras Cardona was recently convicted of sexual battery for the April 2006 rape of a pastry chef at the exclusive Everglades Club in Palm Beach, Florida. The evidence central to the prosecution's case was the witness ID of Cardona, the perpetrator's t-shirt found at the scene which was the same brand and type of shirt found in Cardona's bedroom, and a toothbrush found at the scene that did not belong to the victim and contained DNA which was miraculously consistent with that of Cardona. The case is chronocoled in this Palm Beach Post story.

One would expect prosecutors, eager to obtain a conviction, to want to skip over additional scientific testing that could yield probative evidence of guilt or innocence. The prosecutors went to trial thinking (and were correct) that they had enough evidence to score a conviction of Mr. Cardona without testing the two hairs with roots collected from the perpetrator's t-shirt:

Former Assistant State Attorney Ron Herman handled the case in the months before Cardona's trial. Herman said he was confident in the evidence he had: a rape victim's strong eyewitness ID of Cardona and his toothbrush found at the scene. "I thought it was solid to support a conviction," Herman said. Hairs from the bed and T-shirt - they were a gamble. If none belonged to Cardona, it would not point-blank exonerate him, Herman says. And it may have mucked up the prosecution's case against him. Besides, Herman knew Cardona's defense team had asked to have the hairs tested at a private DNA lab - an effort he did not oppose.

So if the prosecutor doesn't DNA test the hairs and his rationalization is that a result excluding Cardona as the contributor of those hairs would seriously muck up the prosecution's case, possibly raising enough reasonable doubt to support an acquittal, any defense attorney, paid in excess of $25,000 to represent Cardona, would surely obtain the testing? Right?:

In the months after Cardona's arrest in April 2006, the attorneys began their work, deposing witnesses, Amezaga's flying to Maine to take the victim's statement. In January 2007, Amezaga asked Circuit Judge William Berger to allow the defense to test the hairs at a private lab in Broward County, which the judge did. Amezaga said then Cardona's family would pay for the testing. Then their money ran out.

When a person who has paid a private lawyer runs out of money, he can have the state cover some basic costs by being declared "indigent for due process." Taxpayers then pay for the critical elements every defense deserves, including forensic testing and experts. The money is paid by the Justice Administrative Commission, an agency in Tallahassee that monitors requests.

. . .

In February, Amezaga received an invoice from the private Broward lab for the DNA testing. It cost a small fortune - $575 per hair, $350 per hour to review a case and $2,800 per day for expert testimony. Way in excess of what the JAC was willing to pay. In late April, Cardona's attorney returned to court and told [the judge] . . . that testing cost much more than the caps on costs allowed. . . . The commission, though, follows court orders from judges. And at that two-minute hearing in late April, Berger gave Cardona a critical ruling: "I find extraordinary circumstances and a need to have this particular lab engaged," the judge said. "Therefore the cap ... this will exceed it if necessary."

It seems that Mr. Cardona is in a great position to get his testing. What's more, is that these hairs have roots which makes DNA testing easier and implies that the hairs were forcefully removed (i.e. through a struggle), rather than deposited on the white t-shirt through casual contact or transference. So Mr. Zealous Defense Attorney took the judge's order for extraordinary costs to the JAC, right?

Well not so much:

Yet no test on the hairs in Cardona's case was ever done. Amezaga said it was not a strategic decision not to test the hairs; it was a financial one. He was unable to square the $6,000 cost of tests with what the state was willing to pay, he said.

But why was that? Berger had ruled Amezaga could exceed caps and spend more to get the hairs tested. The attorney looks taken aback when asked about this and refuses to say why. "You can draw your own conclusions about that," Amezaga said.

Just before Cardona's trial began in June, he met with Amezaga. That's when Cardona learned the hair evidence in his case had not been tested. Amezaga said the best legal advice he could give was for Cardona to fire him and get the public defender's office to represent him. That office, presumably, would be able to pay for the testing. Then the tens of thousands of dollars Cardona and his family had paid the attorney might all be for naught.

So Cardona went to trial [without the DNA testing and was convicted].

No one can truly know whether the toothbrush was planted at the crime scene or whether Esdras Cardona is innocent. But there is little question whether he deserved a better, more zealous, defense. His case is now in the hands of the West Palm Beach public defender and it is likely he gets his testing on appeal or in post-conviction.

As for Mr. Amezaga, he will likely be the subject of a non-frivolous claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, where he won't be able to sidestep the question of why he didn't get the DNA testing, when he had a judge's order allowing for the full expense of that testing to be paid by the State.