An independent investigation should be conducted to find out who is accountable for an innocent man spending 22 years behind bars.
Published August 22, 2004
Wilton Dedge is a man who spent half his life in a Florida prison for a crime he didn't commit. He was convicted of a violent rape in 1982 and was released 22 years later, thanks to the tireless efforts of a group of lawyers convinced of his innocence.
But what transforms Dedge's tale from a personal tragedy to a public travesty is the way the prosecutors spent years blocking efforts by Dedge to prove his innocence. Then, when it became likely they had the wrong man, prosecutors stood in the jailhouse door and fought every effort to free him, even to the point of arguing that his innocence didn't matter.
The case against Dedge was weak from the start. At least six of his co-workers said that he was working at his job at an auto body shop when the brutal rape was supposed to have occurred many miles away. The victim first identified her attacker as a six-foot-tall bald man, when Dedge was five-foot-six and had a full head of hair. But she later said Dedge was the perpetrator.
Dedge was given a second trial because prosecutors at his first relied upon discredited evidence that a dog had picked up Dedge's scent in the victim's room. At his second trial, a big deal was made of pubic hair found at the crime scene. A forensics witness from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said the hair could be Dedge's. It wasn't, as it turns out, but that was only discovered 16 years later after a DNA test. Also at the second trial, notorious jailhouse snitch Clarence Zacke testified that Dedge had confessed the crime to him. Zacke's general cooperation with prosecutors earned him 120 years off his sentence. Dedge was convicted again and sentenced to life in prison.
In 1996, Dedge first started asking for DNA tests on the pubic hair. But Brevard County prosecutor Robert Wayne Holmes vigorously and repeatedly fought the requests. Help for Dedge came from Barry Scheck and Nina Morrison of the Innocence Project and Milton Hirsch, a Miami defense attorney, who were all working pro bono. With that kind of legal firepower, the DNA test was finally done in late 2000. The hair was found not to be Dedge's.
But rather than admit an error, Holmes changed strategies. He said the pubic hair was insignificant and Dedge should not be released on that basis. For more than three years, Holmes and Assistant Attorney General Bonnie Jean Parrish argued before Florida courts that regardless of the result, the DNA test should not be considered since it occurred before the enactment of statutory rules on DNA testing. And, they argued, that in the interest of finality - the principle that the system is harmed when criminal cases are repeatedly reopened - Dedge should remain in prison regardless of whether he did the crime or not. After a second DNA test was conducted on semen samples, excluding Dedge as the rapist, prosecutors finally dropped the charges against him and he was released earlier this month.
How these prosecutors can sleep at night is their problem. How they are still in their jobs is ours.
Seminole-Brevard State Attorney Norm Wolfinger is refusing to do an internal investigation into how this injustice came about and whether to hold anyone accountable for a man who lost 22 years of his life. It is a typical close-the-ranks reaction, but there isn't a rug big enough to sweep this one under.
It is essential that an independent investigation be conducted, including whether the snitch Zacke was coached in any way by prosecutors. If Wolfinger isn't willing, then the governor should appoint a commission to investigate. If the governor's not interested, then the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division should be enlisted. One way or another a bright light needs to be shined on how things went so horribly wrong.
In addition, Dedge is deserving of substantial compensation, and the Legislature should make that one of its first orders of business when it reconvenes. The state spent hundreds of thousands of dollars putting Dedge in prison and keeping him there. Now the state has the duty to dig even deeper to try to compensate for what was done to him.
Money is only part of the recompense. Dedge also needs to know that the people who helped to steal his youth will face their own judgment. Being a prosecutor is a high privilege and with that comes the corresponding responsibility to put truth-seeking above all other considerations. When prosecutors are uninterested in evidence of a defendant's innocence, they have lost their professional way. They should not only lose their job but their license to practice law.
