In his appeal, Randy Puryear says the state went too far in making race an issue at his 2002 murder trial.
By CHRISTOPHER GOFFARD
Published March 24, 2004
TAMPA - As prosecutors told it, racism helped kill Jemale Wells.
Wells, an unarmed father of two, was black. Randy Puryear, a dentist with a .357-caliber Magnum, was white. Witnesses who saw their confrontation on a Countryway cul-de-sac in September 2000 say Puryear hurled racist slurs and menaced Wells with his gun.
For Tampa's black community, State vs. Puryear was one of the most watched cases in recent memory, ending in Puryear's conviction for second-degree murder and his 25-year prison sentence.
But now, the former Town 'N Country dentist is claiming that the state went too far in making race an issue at his trial.
By presenting Puryear as a "rich white man" who was "bad, bigoted," the prosecutor improperly conveyed the message that "a vote for acquittal would be a vote for racism," according to papers filed in Puryear's appeal.
At the November 2002 trial, the prosecutor portrayed Wells, 39, as a peacemaker who broke up a fight between neighborhood boys. After Puryear's girlfriend complained that Wells had roughed up her son, Puryear confronted Wells and brandished a gun.
Wells charged at Puryear. The gun went off in the scuffle. The defense said it was unclear who had control of the gun; Puryear said he blacked out when it fired.
During the trial, prosecutor Curt Allen repeatedly reminded jurors of Puryear's purported slurs and introduced into evidence a racist remark allegedly directed at Wells by Puryear's girlfriend more than a year before the shooting.
The prosecution said the highly charged atmosphere that gave rise to the shooting could not be explained without reference to the racial epithets. The prosecutor suggested they might help explain Wells' mental and emotional state when he charged Puryear, perhaps fearing for his family's safety.
"The State's repeated focus on racial issues invited the jury to transform a trial about who had control of the gun into a referendum on racial and economic justice," argued James Felman, a prominent Tampa attorney Puryear has hired to write his appeal.
Among the defense complaints:
During jury selection, the prosecutor asked prospective jurors a host of questions dealing with race and class, such as whether they believed the law should apply equally to people regardless of "what color their skin is and what they do for a living."
The prosecutor told jurors that while Puryear had watched a Bucs game at the stadium on the day of the shooting, Wells had watched it on television because he couldn't afford the stadium's "luxury seats."
In cross-examining defense experts, the prosecutor introduced the racial slurs in "gratuitous" fashion. He asked a forensic pathologist, "You can't determine whether or not Mr. Puryear went up to another man's house and without any reason whatsoever called him a f------ n-----?"
Apart from race, the appeal lawyer argues that jurors should not have heard a 911 tape, placed by a witness after the shooting, "which had no relevance of any kind." On the tape, traumatized children can be heard screaming and crying in the background while Wells lay dying on the street. Jurors were visibly upset.
The prosecutor had argued that the tape was necessary to show the chaotic condition of the scene and the witness' emotional state, since he expected the defense to question inconsistencies in the witness' account.
Hillsborough Circuit Judge J. Rogers Padgett allowed the tape into evidence. Later in the trial, however, he said he "was burned on that 911 tape." It was not clear what the judge meant.
The 2nd District Court of Appeal is weighing whether Puryear, now 44, deserves a new trial. The Attorney General's Office, which is handling the appeal for the state, did not return a call for this story.
