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Deny, delay no more in Dedge case

By MARTIN DYCKMAN
Published June 19, 2005

TALLAHASSEE - Tuesday is the deadline for the state of Florida to respond to one of the hundreds of lawsuits it will face this year. In any defense shop, training and instinct would suggest a routine strategy: Move to dismiss and/or deny.

But this isn't a routine case. For the state's lawyers to do the usual would compound a great injustice.

The plaintiffs are Wilton Dedge, who spent 22 years in prison for a crime the state admits he didn't commit, and the parents who spent their life savings trying to get him out. House Speaker Allan Bense wouldn't allow a claims bill, so the lawsuit is the Dedges' best and perhaps only hope to be paid for his 22 years of slave labor and the retirement funds his parents had to cash in to help him.

DNA testing proved Dedge innocent beyond any possible doubt of the rape for which he was convicted in two dubious trials. But that came 16 years - sixteen! - after he first asked for DNA testing and the state attorney's office in Brevard County said no. He remained in prison 10 years - ten! - after the Innocence Project took up his case and still the state said no. And for three years - three! - after the first DNA test disparaged key evidence.

And for most of that time, the state was invoking the usual legalities: Dismiss. Deny. Delay. In an infamous moment, an assistant attorney general told an incredulous appeals court that whether Dedge was innocent didn't matter. It was more important to enforce deadlines.

Nobody but Dedge himself (and the real rapist) knew then that he was innocent.

But everybody knows it now. And almost everybody agrees that Florida owes the Dedges at least what they spent, what he could have earned and saved in 22 years, and the therapy a person needs to get his life back after an ordeal like that. The question is how.

"I am confident compensation will be given next session," Gov. Jeb Bush wrote in an e-mail to a concerned citizen last month. "It is deserved."

He shouldn't be so confident. The Senate passed a good bill but the House passed only an empty promise to look at a claim next year. It would have been different, perhaps, had Dedge been a corporate contributor lobbying for a tax break. The outlook for a little guy will be no better next year.

I had intended to be writing what Attorney General Charlie Crist should do. But it turns out that he's not defending this case. That's being done by Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher, in his capacity as head of risk management.

"Let me put it this way," Crist said Friday. "That man deserves to be compensated because a gross injustice was done. That's what I would say, and it's probably a large reason why I couldn't defend the state. I couldn't defend it with great zeal, which is what the ethics code requires of an attorney."

The buck stops at Gallagher's office, which has the legal duty of defending the Department of Corrections, the logical though blameless defendant in this case. Gallagher is just as sympathetic to Dedge as is Crist, his rival for governor - "I believe he ought to be compensated," Gallagher said Friday - but the question is how. A complication: Any settlement has to be approved by the state Budget Commission; i.e., the Legislature. So if Gallagher is going to help Dedge, he'll need strong encouragement and support from Bush and from the public.

The fastest way to do that would be to go into court and confess judgment. Admit Dedge was wrongfully imprisoned. Concede his right to compensation. Agree that "sovereign immunity" - weren't we supposed to be done with that in 1776? - gives the government no more right to take an innocent person's liberty than to take one's land for a road.

If confession is good for the soul, it ought to be good for the state as well.

The state relied on a charlatan dog handler and on junk science - pubic hair that wasn't Dedge's - to put Dedge in prison. Prosecutors used a jailhouse perjurer to send Dedge back to prison (for a longer term) with testimony about an imaginary confession. The state used every device in the book to prevent a DNA test.

So isn't it about time that Florida's lawyers did something right on our behalf?

Should they do the usual thing, there would be years of skirmishing and appeals over whether Dedge even has a case for a jury, and possibly more years of litigation after that. As a citizen, I don't want that on my conscience.

Martin Dyckman's e-mail address is dyckman@sptimes.com

[Last modified June 18, 2005, 01:36:03]