Tag Archives: Florida

Groveland Four Exonerated

A judge on Monday officially exonerated four young African American men of the false accusation that they raped a white woman seventy years ago. Administrative Judge Heidi Davis dismissed the indictments of Ernest Thomas and Samuel Shepherd, who were fatally shot by law enforcement, and set aside the convictions and sentences of Charles Greenlee and Walter Irvin. The men known as the Groveland Four, who ranged from 16 to 26 at the time, were accused of raping a woman in the central Florida town of Groveland in 1949.

It all began on July 16, 1949, when a 17-year-old white woman and her estranged husband told the police that after their car broke down in Lake County, Fla., the four men had stopped to provide help, then took the woman from the car and raped her.

A posse shot Ernest Thomas more than 400 times after he fled Lake County. A local sheriff, Willis McCall, fatally shot Shepherd and wounded Irvin in 1951 as he drove them to a second trial after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned their original convictions. Irvin and Shepherd, both World War II veterans, were handcuffed together at the time. McCall claimed they had tried to escape while he was transporting them from Raiford State Prison back to the county seat of Tavares for the new trial. Shepherd died on the spot; Irvin, who pretended to be dead, survived and later told FBI investigators that McCall had shot them in cold blood and that his deputy, James Yates, had also shot him in an attempt to kill him.

Charles Greenlee, who was 16 when he was charged, was the only one to survive past 1969.

Thurgood Marshall Sr., then with the NAACP, represented Irvin during his second trial, but an all-white jury again convicted him and he was sentenced to death. Governor Leroy Collins later commuted Irvin’s sentence to life with parole. Greenlee, also sentenced to life, was paroled in 1962 and died in 2012 at the age of 78. Irvin died in 1969, one year after he was paroled.

An investigator interviewed the grandson of Jesse Hunter, the now-deceased prosecutor of two of the Groveland Four defendants. According to the grandson, Broward Hunter, his grandfather and a judge in the case, knew there was no rape. James Yates, the deputy who served as a primary witness, likely fabricated evidence, including shoe casts.

A Broken Justice System

Leave a reply

On August 10, 2010, Marissa Alexander, a thirty-year-old battered mother, fired a warning shot at her husband, Rico Gray, after he broke down the bathroom door, strangled her, and threatened to kill her. Previous beatings had sent her to the hospital and likely caused her to have premature labor. Gray also admitted he hit Alexander, who used her legally owned gun to protect her life.

State Attorney Angela Corey, (known for the George Zimmerman debacle) charged Alexander with three counts of aggravated assault for allegedly endangering the lives of Gray and two children in the home. That’s right. Marissa Alexander was endangering the lives of others, not Rico Gray, who was arrested in 2006 and 2009 for domestic battery and was under a restraining order after his 2009 arrest.

The charges against Alexander came with a 20-year sentence because Florida’s 10-20-life law sets mandatory penalties for crimes when a gun is involved.

Alexander refused a three-year plea bargain sentence, believing that she was innocent. However, she was convicted (that must have been one intelligent set of jurors) and sent to prison for three concurrent 20-year sentences.

An appeals court overturned her conviction, writing that the sentences must be consecutive, but other state courts of appeal disagree. Alexander was released on bail Nov. 27, 2013, after 21 months behind bars.

Now, Angela Corey has refiled the same charges and a retrial is scheduled to begin July 28. Under her first sentence, Alexander had a chance for parole. If convicted in a second trial, she faces sixty consecutive years in prison, which means a parole is unlikely, thanks to Cory, who many believe is exacting revenge because Alexander turned down her original plea bargain.

So instead of offering Alexander another plea bargain, or better yet releasing her based on time already served, the country is treated to a Florida “justice” system that has gone completely off the rails.

Go figure.

Voter Suppression

Leave a reply

According to a report by the Brennan Center for Justice, new legislation passed in 2011 in 14 states made it harder for minorities, seniors, and students to vote. As a result, it’s estimated that more than five million eligible voters will have a more difficult time voting in the 2012 election. But is there really voter fraud taking place throughout the country?

A comprehensive Justice Department investigation found that between 2002 and 2007 not a single person was prosecuted for going to the polls and impersonating an eligible voter, which the anti-fraud laws are supposedly designed to stop. Out of the 300 million votes cast in that period, federal prosecutors convicted only 86 people for voter fraud–– and the vast majority of those cases involved immigrants and former felons who were simply unaware of their ineligibility.

Yesterday, a US District Court judge blocked portions of Florida’s registration law requiring voter-drive groups to turn over completed materials to the state within 48 hours or face possible $1,000 fines. The two-day window, which was previously 10 days, made no provision for mailing applications and served little, if any, purpose, the judge stated.

Also yesterday, the Justice Department wrote Florida’s Secretary of State warning that a state program to identify 180,00 ineligible voters may violate federal law, including one aimed at reviewing voter limits in states such as Florida with a history of racial discrimination. The U.S. told the state to respond by June 6 whether it will cease the practice.

The question facing the Justice Department is whether Florida’s attempt to verify voter eligibility violates the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 1993 National Voter Registration Act. Under the Voting Rights Act, federal approval is required for election law changes in five Florida counties because of past racial discrimination. Any changes must be submitted for review by a federal judge in Washington and the U.S. attorney general under the Voting Rights Act.

Here’s a suggestion. Instead of worrying about imagined voter fraud, perhaps those concerned citizens so interested in protecting voting rights and preserving democracy should concentrate their efforts on registering the 51 million citizens––more than 24 percent of the eligible population––who are not registered to vote.

After all, as the Brennan Center for Justice concluded, “It is more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning, than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.”

An Excuse For Murder

Leave a reply

As a mystery writer, I spend a lot of my time planning fictional murders, murders that my protagonist, Homicide Detective John Santana––and my readers––have to solve. Unlike a mystery writer, I’m sure you don’t spend your time planning the perfect crime, though I’ll bet that many of you––at least at some point in your life have thought about it.

But imagine for a moment that you wanted to murder someone. And imagine that you lived in a state such as Florida that has a Stand Your Ground law, considered one of the most sweeping in the nation. The law legalizes the use of deadly force by anyone “who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be. The law adds that a person “has no duty to retreat, and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”

So far so good, you think. But it gets even better, because the Florida statute immunizes the person who uses deadly force from civil or criminal liability. Under the law, you could acquire a handgun or use one you already own, wait for an opportunity when there are no witnesses, cold-bloodedly murder someone, and then claim self-defense. Sounds more like fiction, you say. Unfortunately, it isn’t.

One doesn’t have to be a mystery writer to imagine George Zimmerman’s thought process before he murdered Trayvon Martin, an unarmed, black, teenager. Martin was talking on his cell phone with his girlfriend, when he was followed and confronted by Zimmerman, then fatally shot in the chest. Zimmerman knew, as everyone in Florida who has contemplated murder knew, that he could use the law to try and escape prosecution. Given the outrage, the supposition that this was a hate crime, and the mounting evidence against him, George Zimmerman may have figured wrong. One hopes so.

Thirty-one states now have some variation of the Florida Stand Your Ground law. While it’s unlikely that few on either side of the highly charged debate will be swayed by the killing of Trayvon Martin, it is likely that more innocent lives will be lost under the guise of “self-defense.” And that isn’t fiction.