Location

Defendant(s)

Date of Alleged Crime

Bennie Eddie Demps was sentenced to death for the murder of Alfred Sturgis inside Florida State Prison.  At trial, inmate Larry Hathaway testified that he reported seeing James Jackson stab Sturgis with a shank, while Demps held down Sturgis and Harry Mungin acted as lookout.  Demps, Sturgis, and Hathaway were all convicted murderers.  Two prison guards, A.V. Rhoden and Hershel Wilson testified that Sturgis named Demps as one of his three assailants.  Demps had previously been sentenced to death for a double homicide, but his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1972 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared capital punishment unconstitutional because it was carried out in an arbitrary manner.  Demps claimed prison officials framed him for the Sturgis killing because he had escaped his earlier death sentence.

Before trial, Hathaway told an attorney for a prisoners rights group that he did not witness the Sturgis murder. After the trial, three inmates came forward to say that Hathaway was nowhere near the scene of the stabbing.  In 1994, Hathaway told a defense investigator that he had lied at trial.  Seven months after the Sturgis killing, inmate Leroy Colbroth was murdered.  Several inmates swore in depositions that Colbroth was killed because he had stabbed Sturgis. Other inmates later said that they saw Colbroth kill Sturgis or that he admitted killing him.  This information was withheld from Demps' lawyers.  Some of these inmates were willing to help Demps, but did not, stating in sworn affidavits that prison officials either threatened them with retribution if they testified or offered incentives, such as transfers or shorter sentences, for refusing.

Gerald Kogan, the chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court, later stated that he had "grave doubts about Kemps," even though he did not vote to give Demps a new trial.  Demps was executed by lethal injection on June 7, 2000.  (Chicago Tribune) (JD12)  [8/08]

William Troop, Howard Shaffer and Charles Stevens were convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Mary McMillan.  The victim's husband, Malcolm McMillan, 65, lived with his wife Mary, 60, in a rural cottage on Superior Street, west of Jacksonville.  He said three men attacked him and his wife with an ax.  He managed to escape, but his wife died.  Initially, he said the men were white and did not mention them having masks.  However, following the convictions, in retelling his tale, he changed details, saying the men were masked, then said they were foreigners who talked funny.  Later he said they were black.  McMillan had also been known to beat his wife from time to time.

Because of doubts raised by McMillan, a judge ordered a new trial.  The retrial led to the same result as the first trial.  The Florida Supreme Court then sent the case back for a third trial.  The defense attorneys moved to dismiss the case.  The judge agreed, citing the absence of any motive and the contradictory statements of McMillan.  The Duval Three were released in 1930.  The murder of Mary McMillan has never been solved.  (FL Times-Union)

Leo Jones, a black man, was convicted of the sniper killing of white police officer Thomas Szafranski, 28, and sentenced to death.  The main witness against Jones later recanted.  Two key officers in the case had left the Jacksonville Police Department under a cloud, and allegations that one of them beat Jones before he supposedly confessed had gained credence.

A retired police officer, Cleveland Smith, came forward and said Officer Lynwood Mundy had bragged that he beat Jones after his arrest. Smith, who described Mundy as an "enforcer," testified that he once watched Mundy get a confession from a suspect by squeezing the suspect's genitals in a vise grip. He said Mundy unabashedly described beating Jones.  Smith waited until his 1997 retirement to come forward because he wanted to secure his pension.

More than a dozen people had implicated another man as the killer, saying they either saw him carrying a rifle as he ran from the crime scene or heard him brag he had shot the officer.  Even Florida Supreme Court Justice Leander Shaw, who formerly headed a division of the state attorney's office, wrote that Jones's case had become "a horse of a different color."  Newly discovered evidence, Shaw wrote, "casts serious doubt on Jones's guilt."  Shaw and one other judge voted to grant Jones a new trial.  But a five-judge majority ruled against Jones.  Jones was executed one week later in the electric chair on March 24, 1998.  (DPI)  [11/05]

Wilbert Lee and Freddie Pitts, both blacks, were convicted of the robbery and murders of two white gas station attendants.  While no physical evidence linked them to the deaths, the prosecution used their own confessions, which were beaten out of them, and they also used the testimony of an alleged eyewitness.  The defendants also suffered from having incompetent defense counsel.

A few weeks after they were sentenced to death, a white man, Curtis "Boo" Adams Jr., was arrested for killing a Fort Lauderdale gas station attendant during a robbery.  Adams subsequently confessed to the murders for which Lee and Pitts were convicted.  When he learned of this confession, the local sheriff, Byrd Parker, wanted nothing to do with it, saying, "I already got two niggers waiting for the chair in Raiford for those murders."  A polygraph examiner who had heard Adams confess took the matter to the press, and soon a new trial was ordered, at which Lee and Pitts were again convicted.

Some time after the second conviction, the alleged eyewitness recanted her testimony and the state attorney general admitted that the state had unlawfully suppressed evidence.  The defendants were released in 1975 when they received a full pardon from Governor Askew, who stated he was "sufficiently convinced that they were innocent."  The ordeal of Lee and Pitts is detailed in the book Invitation to a Lynching by Gene Miller.  In 1998, the Florida Legislature awarded the defendants $500,000 each in compensation.  (FLCC) (Time)  [7/05]

After Khomas Revels, an off-duty deputy sheriff, was murdered during a robbery of Luke's Grocery store, Tallahassee police charged five black men from Quincy, Florida with the crime.  One of these men, David Keaton, was an 18-year-old star football player with plans to enter the ministry.  Although he had an alibi, Keaton was held in custody for more than a week.  During that time he maintained he had been threatened, lied to, and beaten until he confessed.  He believed that despite his confession, no jury would convict him when they heard his alibi.  He was wrong.  At trial his coerced confession was buttressed by the false testimony of five eyewitnesses.  Keaton was convicted and sentenced to death.  In his confession Keaton implicated Johnnie Frederick, who was “clean as a whistle,” in the belief that a judge and jury would see that his confession was false.  Frederick was convicted as well and sentenced to life in prison.

David Charles Smith and two other Quincy defendants still awaited trial.  In the meantime, a witness arose, Benjamin Franklin Pye, who knew the actual men who committed the crime.  The men were from Jacksonville, not Quincy, though Pye knew only their street names.  But he knew the motel where they had stayed, the dates, and the rental car they drove.  He was with them when they cased Luke's to rob it later.  Pye gave this information to his attorney, who in turn relayed it to Smith's attorney, Will Varn.  Varn was a former U.S. attorney, and he was able to get funds from the judge to hire an investigator who came up with names to fit Pye's story.  The names also fit the crime scene fingerprints that had not matched any of the Quincy Five.  The three Jacksonville men were tried and convicted.

Despite the new evidence, the state continued to insist the Quincy Five were guilty as well.  When Smith came to trial, five white eyewitnesses swore he was guilty.  But Varn had the conflicting fingerprints and convictions, Pye's testimony, and a good alibi for Smith.  An all-white jury acquitted him.  The Florida Supreme Court took note and ordered new trials for Keaton and Frederick.  The prosecution soon dropped charges against Keaton and Frederick, as well as against the remaining two Quincy defendants.  Keaton and Frederick were released in 1973.  In 1974 Tallahassee writer Jeffrey Lickson published a 142-page book about the case entitled David Charles: The Story of the Quincy Five.  (SP Times) (TWM) (FLCC) (SPT1) (SPT2) (OSB) (Papers)  [3/07]

William Thomas Zeigler Jr. was sentenced to death for the murders of four people in his furniture store.  The store was located at 1010 S. Dillard St. in Winter Garden, FL.  The victims were Zeigler's wife, Eunice, her parents, Perry and Virginia Edwards, and a black customer, Charlie Mays.  Zeigler, himself, was critically shot.

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Half-brothers, William Riley Jent and Earnest Lee Miller were sentenced to death for the rape and murder of 20-year-old Linda Gale Bradshaw.  Her body was found in Richloam Game Preserve on July 14, 1979.  She had been burned to death and her body was not identified.  Two women with whom Jent and Miller had been drinking testified against them.  Years later one stated that she had testified about "facts" she saw in a drug-induced dream.  The other said she felt pressured by police to go along with her friend's story.

A re-examination of the autopsy report demonstrated that the crime never took place the way the eyewitnesses described it.  After the victim was identified in 1986, the time of the murder was established, and it was discovered that Jent and Miller had airtight alibis.  The victim's boyfriend, Charles Robert "Bobby" Dodd, Jr., had moved away immediately after her murder.  Four months later, Dodd's new girlfriend was also found burned to death.  Prosecutors allowed the men to go free in 1988 in exchange for them pleading guilty to lesser offenses and receiving time served sentences.  In 1991, the Pasco County Sheriff's Department paid the men $65,000 to settle civil rights claims. (CWC)  [11/05]

Samuel Jason Derrick was sentenced to death for the murder of Rama Sharma.  Sharma, 55, owned the Moon Lake General Store and was found dead behind the store.  Following the murder, police received a tip that a car was seen driving suspiciously around the crime scene vicinity in the early morning hours of June 25, 1987, prior to the finding of the victim's body.  The description of the car, including a partial license plate number, seemed to match that of a car driven by David Lowry.  Lowry deflected the investigation away from himself by implicating Derrick, who was then his friend.  At trial, five Pasco County detectives swore under oath that Derrick confessed to the crime.  There was no written, audio, or video record of this "confession" or any interrogation notes written by any of the five detectives.  The Pasco County Sheriff's Office had a reputation for corruption.  Just two years earlier, St. Petersburg Times reporter Lucy Morgan won a Pulitzer Prize for her series of articles documenting this corruption.

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Richard Paey is a pain medication patient who was convicted of drug trafficking.  In 1985, Paey was injured in a car crash near Philadelphia on the Schuylkill Expressway.  After a failed operation, he was left with metal screws in his spine and unrelenting pain.  He was also later diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.  Doctors could do little for the wheelchair bound Paey other than prescribe painkillers.  Over time as Paey developed a tolerance for the painkillers, he had to use higher and higher doses to gain relief.  Paey tried to cut back his dependence on painkillers, but to no avail as attempting to cut back simply meant enduring pain.

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Inmate John Lee Fort confessed on national television to the murder of another inmate and claimed it was a guard-ordered assassination.  Officials blamed Thomas Craig for the murder and kept him in solitary confinement for two years.  At trial, he was acquitted of the murder in 56 minutes and released a few months later.  Officials had reason to blame Craig.  According to Craig, “I was on the burial squad.”  “They would take us out and have us burying these guys who had supposedly died of natural causes.  I managed to get a look into a couple of those coffins -- one had an obvious bullet hole, another's skull was crushed.”

Another inmate, Bennie Demps, was executed in 2000 despite the existence of a DOC report that seemed to point to his innocence.  There was irrefutable evidence that Martin Anderson, a 14-year-old inmate, was brutally beaten to death.  The state's medical examiner initially claimed he had died of his sickle cell anemia.  The state of Florida now openly admits that inmate Frank Valdes was killed by out-of-control correctional officers.  (TruthInJustice)  [9/06]