Location

Defendant(s)

Date of Alleged Crime

Jerry Frank Townsend, who is mentally retarded, was arrested in 1979 for the rape of a pregnant Miami woman.  During the investigation, he confessed to six murders.  He was convicted in 1980 for the 1973 murders of Naomi Gamble and Barbara Brown in Broward County.  In 1982, he pleaded guilty to two murders in Miami including the 1979 murder of 13-year-old Sonja Marion.  He also pleaded no contest to two 1979 murders in Broward County.  Including the original rape, Townsend received seven life terms.

In 1998, Sonja Marion's mother had a Fort Lauderdale police detective review the Townsend cases, and DNA testing cleared him of some crimes.  In 2000, DNA evidence implicated Eddie Lee Mosley as did evidence from Frank Lee Smith's case.  DNA evidence cast doubt on all of Townsend's confessions, and in 2001, he was cleared of all charges and released after being imprisoned for 22 years.  (IP)  [6/05]

Along with Sonia "Sunny" Jacobs and Walter Rhodes, Jesse Joseph Tafero was convicted of murdering Florida highway patrolman, Phillip Black, and visiting Canadian constable, Donald Irwin, at an I-95 rest stop.  The conviction was based largely on the testimony of Rhodes, who named Tafero as the shooter.  The state withheld from the defense results of a polygraph that indicated Rhodes had failed.  The state also withheld gunpowder test results that indicated Rhodes was the only person to have fired a gun.

Rhodes recanted his testimony on three occasions in 1977, 1979, and 1982, stating that he, not Tafero, shot the policemen.  A statement from a prison guard corroborating Rhodes' recantations was suppressed and found years later.  Rhodes has since reverted to his original testimony.  The trial judge, "Maximum Dan" Futch, had been a highway patrolman three years before the trial and wore his police hat to work.  He kept a miniature replica of an electric chair on his desk.  He did not allow Tafero to call witnesses, nor would not allow him hearings on this decision.  Two eyewitnesses, testifying for the state, said that while the shots were being fired, one officer was holding Tafero over the hood of the car.  Tafero was executed in the electric chair on May 4, 1990.  Officials interrupted the execution three times because flames and smoke shot out of his head.

Like Tafero, Jacobs was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1981.  In Jacobs' 1992 appeal, the new evidence was presented which resulted in the reversal of her conviction.  Had the evidence been found before Tafero's execution, it is highly probable that his conviction would have been likewise overturned.  Jacobs later accepted a plea bargain in which she did not have to admit guilt and was released.  She affirms her innocence.  A 1996 ABC TV movie was made about the case entitled In the Blink of an Eye.  (CWC) (NY Times)  [6/05]

Christopher Clugston was convicted of the murder of Bryce Waldman.  After a woman named Kathy Menut was thrown out of a Hallandale bar named the Agora Ballroom, her husband, Theodore Menut, and her friend, Clugston, allegedly returned in a green station wagon.  As the car cruised through the parking lot, Clugston reportedly opened fire with a .30-.30 rifle, killing Waldman, a 19-year-old University of Miami student was working at the bar as a part-time bouncer.  No physical evidence linked Clugston to the crime.  His first two trials ended in hung juries, but he was convicted at his third trial.

In 1986, the Menuts recanted their testimony that Clugston had participated in the crime.  Theodore Menut had previously had refused at some point to testify against Clugston, apparently after he was also convicted of the murder.  Kathy Menut told authorities that they framed Clugston to help the actual gunman.  In addition, a new witness surfaced to say that Clugston was not the man she saw in the car just before the shooting.  And a composite portrait drawn at the time of the crime was withheld from Clugston's defense at trial. It showed a man with long hair and a mustache, unlike the clean-shaven Clugston.

In July 1994, Florida Governor Lawton Chiles commuted the Clugston's life sentence to time served on the condition that he leave Florida and never return.  Clugston hails from Bethesda, MD.  Clugston, however, left prison with a death sentence.  He contracted AIDS from being raped repeatedly while incarcerated.  He was only 22-years-old when he went to prison.  While Clugston was more than happy to leave Florida, the condition that he not return relieved Florida of responsibility for providing years of expensive treatment for Clugston's condition.  Following his release, Clugston sought a new trial to clear his name, but it was denied.  (Google) (SP Times) (CNN)  [4/09]

Timothy Brown, a mentally retarded man, gave a garbled confession to the murder of Broward Sheriff's Deputy Patrick Behan for which he was convicted.  In 2001, the Miami Herald questioned the conviction in a series of investigative articles.  In 2003, a judge threw out Brown's confession and Brown was released on low bail.  It seems unlikely that he will be retried.

Brown's co-defendant, Keith King, also gave a confession after being coerced, threatened, and punched by detectives.  King served a reduced sentence on a plea bargain to manslaughter and was free at the time of Brown's release.  (Miami Herald) (AP News)  [9/05]

Herman Lindsey was convicted in 2006 of the 1994 murder of Joanne Mazollo.  Mazollo was shot to death during a robbery of the Big Dollar pawnshop in which she worked.  The evidence against Lindsey consisted of testimony which merely raised suspicions about him.

The strongest piece of evidence was the testimony of Mark Simms, who reportedly had a jailhouse conversation with Lindsey about a month after the crime, long before Lindsey was charged in the Mazollo murder.  Simms told Lindsey he had been involved in a robbery in which someone was shot but not killed.  Lindsey then told Simms that he should have killed the person he shot because this person had seen his face.  Lindsey also told Simms that he had to do that once.  Simms said he had no idea at the time what robbery or murder Lindsey might have been talking about.  Lindsey was sentenced to death.

In July 2009 the Florida Supreme Court overturned Lindsey's conviction after finding that the evidence used against him was insufficient to convict.  The Court also ordered Lindsey's acquittal.  (Lindsey v. Florida) (Miami Herald)  [8/09]

Robert Burkell was convicted of the murder of 81-year-old Charles Bertheas.  Bertheas, a French national, rented a room inside Burkell's home at 9107 NW 72 Court, in Tamarac, FL.  Burkell told investigators he discovered Bertheas lying on the floor inside his room and called 911.  Tamarac Fire Rescue responded to the scene and determined Bertheas was dead.  Bertheas had been bludgeoned with repeated blows to the head, but no weapon was ever identified or found.  His death was ruled a homicide due to blunt trauma.  Bertheas was found on a Sunday afternoon.  It was determined that he died approximately 18 hours before, placing his murder on the previous night.  Bertheas was last seen around 8:30 p.m. on Saturday evening.

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Joseph F. Shea was convicted of murder after confessing to committing one.  The victim, Mary Meslener, 23, was a National Airlines clerk and was found on a canal bank three miles from Miami International Airport.  She had been shot once in the head.  More than two months after the murder, Shea, 20, an airman in the U.S. Air Force, waved a bloody shirt at his sergeant in West Palm Beach and vaguely insisted that he had done "something bad."  Because Shea had been trying to fake a medical discharge, the sergeant was skeptical.  However, the incident brought Shea to the attention of police.

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Luis Carlos Arango was sentenced to death for the murder of Jario Posada.  When police arrived at the murder scene in Arango's apartment, Arango told them that three armed men had robbed them and shot Posada.  He said two of the bandits had fled out the kitchen door while the third had jumped off the bedroom balcony.  Other than Arango, there were no eyewitnesses.  Two guns were found in the apartment, one of which was used to shoot Posada.  Neither of them had Arango's fingerprints on them.  At trial, Arango took the stand and told his story, but the prosecutor argued to the jury that while his story created the possibility of a doubt, it did not create reasonable doubt, as it was totally uncorroborated by any physical evidence.

However, there was corroborating physical evidence, but it was withheld from the defense.  When police conducted a search the day after the murder, they found a cocked pistol and shell casings under the bedroom balcony.  The pistol had been purchased two days earlier and was not registered to Arango.  Because of this withheld evidence the Florida Supreme Court vacated his conviction and Arango was released in 1986.  (Arango v. State)  [7/07]

Krishna Maharaj was sentenced to death for the murders of Derrick Moo Young, 53, and his son, Duane, 23.  The victims, both Jamaicans, had been fatally shot in a room at the Dupont Plaza Hotel.  Maharaj, a Trinidad born British national, owned and operated the Caribbean Times, a newspaper which catered to the West Indian community.  Maharaj has six alibi witnesses that can testify that at the time of the killings, he was 30 miles away at a Fort Lauderdale business meeting.  An investigator working for the defence claims that Maharaj's lawyer was threatened just before the trial – at which he called none of the witnesses.  All six alibi witnesses were willing to testify.

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Orlando Bosquete was convicted of rape.  The victim was raped in her apartment and said her assailant was a Latino who wore no shirt and had no hair.  Shortly after the incident, an officer stopped several Cuban-American men in a convenience store parking lot. Only Bosquete had no shirt and no hair.  The victim identified Bosquete as her assailant from 20 feet away as he was in a police car.  Bosquete had a large, black moustache that the victim then added to her description of her assailant.

Bosquete had come to the U.S. as part of the 1980 Mariel boatlift.  Bosquete escaped from prison in 1985, but was arrested 10 years later.  Three months later, he escaped again, but was arrested again after a year.  DNA tests proved him innocent in 2006, and the prosecutor has apologized.  Nevertheless, upon release from prison, he was rearrested by immigration because while he was on the run, he failed to register and pursue citizenship.  A judge will decide whether he can be deported.  (AP News) (IP)

Paul William Scott was sentenced to death for the murder of James Alessi, a Boca Raton florist.  Scott had accompanied a friend, Rick Kondian, to Alessi's home where they smoked some pot.  Unknown to the two, Alessi had laced it with PCP, a dangerous hallucinogen.  Scott laid down in another room.  Meanwhile, Alessi, a 6'2" homosexual, tried to force himself sexually on Kondian.  Kondian screamed for Scott's help, and with his aid managed to subdue Alessi.  Scott then left.  Kondian left, but returned three and a half-hours later to rob Alessi, and killed him with a champagne bottle during the robbery.

Kondian cut his hand badly with the cork wire from the bottle, and while he afterwards threw the bottle in the woods, a circle of blood from the bottle was left at the murder scene.  At Scott's trial, the prosecution withheld this blood evidence.  Two witnesses to the murder have also come forward to exonerate Scott.  A book was written about the case entitled A Circle of Blood by Bob Pauley.  (FYI) (AngelFire) (Scott v. Dugger) (JD03) [10/08]

Gilbert Stokes was convicted of murdering 18-year-old Jyron Seider during the robbery of a Belle Glade, Florida street dice game.  Stokes was a member of the “Dogs Under Fire” gang while Seider was not.  An appeals court overturned Stokes's conviction because the prosecutor repeatedly tried to create the impression that Stokes was motivated to kill Seider because he was a non-gang member.  No evidence supported that assertion and it was clear that Stokes socialized with non-gang members.  The court stated, “Here, the State lacked strong evidence and it is questionable, under the facts of this case, whether the jury would have found Stokes guilty without hearing evidence of his DUF membership.”  The appeals court also overturned the conviction because the trial judge improperly allowed a detective to give hearsay testimony that alleged witnesses who did not come to court to testify had implicated Stokes in the murder.

DNA evidence and two eyewitnesses linked the state's star witness, Leon Harrell, to the murder.  The two witnesses said that Stokes was not involved.  Police originally arrested Harrell for the murder, but they were unable to make a case against him before his constitutional right to a speedy trial ran out.  At Stokes's second trial in 2006, Harrell refused to testify against Stokes unless prosecutors promised him leniency on unrelated drug charges.  Prosecutors then offered Stokes a plea deal which he accepted on advice of his attorney.  Though he maintained his innocence, Stokes pled guilty to manslaughter and aggravated assault in exchange for a 12-year sentence.  He had already served five years and could be released before he served another five.  According to Stokes's attorney, it is "better to be 32 and walking the streets than 65 and making license plates."  (JD30 p14) (Sun Sentinel)  [2/07]