Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

And justice for all

The flaw in lawmakers' calls to constrict death row appeals was underscored last week when the state Supreme Court granted James Floyd a new trial.

Everyone's liberty dies by inches whenever someone is denied a fair trial. So it was a victory for the people, not a defeat, when the Florida Supreme Court granted James Floyd a new trial last week.

Floyd, a black man, was caught forging checks that belonged to murder victim Annie Anderson. That, and the word of a jailhouse snitch that he had confessed to killing her, were enough to send him to death row more than 20 years ago. But the state did not disclose to the defense or jury two critical facts that undermine confidence in his conviction. A neighbor told St. Petersburg police she had seen two white men entering Anderson's home and leaving in suspicious haste. The snitch had written to prosecutors offering to barter Floyd's freedom for his own.

Floyd might be guilty after all; he seemed to concede it in pleading for mercy at a resentencing hearing 17 years ago. At such a moment, of course, even an innocent man might say anything. Moreover, his original alibi that he had found the checks at a dump was not inconsistent with the possibility that the men the neighbor saw had stolen and discarded them. Police might well have had plausible reasons for not pursuing those men, but the defense was entitled to know about them.

It may never be known why there was not timely disclosure of the neighbor's account. Bernie McCabe, who has since become the Pinellas-Pasco state attorney, says such evidence would not be withheld now, and that is good to know. But another troubling question remains: Why didn't Floyd get a new trial immediately after the critical information came to light 11 years ago?

Florida law does not open a criminal case file until the conviction has been sustained on direct appeal. So it was 1994 before the lawyers in Floyd's postconviction appeal found the documents through a public records request. It took four more years to get them into court, because the state objected that the appeal had been improperly filed.

On seeing what had been withheld from the defense, the attorney general's office should have confessed error and agreed to a new trial. Richard Luce, the circuit judge who had taken over the case, should have granted one. But in 1999 he dismissed the appeal without even hearing evidence on the substance of the neighbor's information. The Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that he should have held a hearing. He complied, but wound up denying a new trial yet again. On March 24, the Supreme Court finally did what Luce should have done six years earlier.

This troubling case history points to what the governor and some legislators overlook in their hue and cry to constrict death row appeals. The long delays are often the fault of trial judges who choose to let the Supreme Court take the heat for ordering new trials. This appears to be an inescapable result of the fact that circuit judges still have to worry about potential opponents every six years. There is no ready cure for this, which makes it all the more important that the Legislature not undermine the Supreme Court's authority.

[Last modified March 29, 2005, 01:31:18]