DNA could free longtime inmate
A Raiford prisoner tells the Innocence Project years later that his co-defendant is not guilty. Testing seems to prove it.
By CANDACE RONDEAUX
Published January 11, 2006
RAIFORD - Douglas James was waiting for a sign. Long and lean in his baggy prison grays, a stack of Bibles next to his cell bunk, he prayed and fasted for days.
When it finally arrived, there were no lightning bolts. The heavens did not part. Instead, two men came to visit him from the Innocence Project-New York, a group that works to use DNA testing to free wrongly convicted defendants. That's when James said he realized God wanted him to tell them what he knew about a prisoner named Alan Crotzer.
Long after Crotzer was sentenced in 1982 to serve more than 100 years in prison for a Tampa armed robbery and rape, he maintained his innocence. But it wasn't until James, 52, told his story to the two visitors from New York in 2002 that people began to listen.
"Al wasn't involved in that crime in no kind of way," James told a reporter recently.
Years ago, prosecutors claimed James, his brother, Corlenzo James, and Crotzer, all from St. Petersburg, were behind a robbery of a Tampa family and their friends. They said Crotzer and James raped a 38-year-old woman and a 12-year-old girl at gunpoint later that evening.
Nearly 24 years after Crotzer went to prison, his attorneys now say DNA evidence excludes him as the rapist. In February, they filed a motion asking a Hillsborough court to throw out Crotzer's conviction and sentence.
The Hillsborough State Attorney's Office is still reviewing the results of a recent DNA test and testimony from several witnesses who have recently come forward, including James. Prosecutors have not decided whether to dismiss the charges.
James insists Crotzer is innocent. He said he and his brother are the real rapists, and he has named a longtime childhood friend as their accomplice.
"The DNA should free Crotzer alone, but if it doesn't, I'm going to testify because it's the right thing to do," James said during an interview with the Times at the Union Correctional Institution in Raiford.
Crotzer's attorneys contend that the victims' testimony was flawed and that they mistakenly identified Crotzer as one of the attackers.
"These were white victims and black perpetrators who were facing each other during an extremely complex and emotional legal process," said former Innocence Project staffer and lawyer David Menschel. "A lot of things stood out as red flags as to why DNA testing was warranted here and why this was an actual innocence case."
Legal experts say flawed witness testimony has played a significant role in dozens of wrongful convictions. Five years ago, Rob Warden, executive director of Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions, analyzed 67 DNA exoneration cases and found that 76 percent of the original convictions were based in whole or in part on eyewitness identification.
But those findings and the growing number of exonerations nationwide have not changed prosecutors' reluctance to overturn convictions, Warden said.
"We see over and over in cases where there was exceedingly strong evidence that this was the wrong person - a strong alibi, for example - and yet the jury convicted anyway," Warden said. "It's tragic. When society makes this horrible mistake, the least our officials can do on our behalf is acknowledge that a mistake was made."
The Hillsborough State Attorney's Office has several legal options in a case like this, Warden said. Prosecutors could decide to support the motion to overturn Crotzer's conviction and sentence. They could join the motion but demand a new jury trial. Or prosecutors could outright oppose the motion, saying the DNA evidence does not provide enough conclusive proof of Crotzer's innocence.
The outcome could depend as much on the DNA evidence in Crotzer's case as it does on James' claim about what happened. He has provided Crotzer's attorneys with a full account of the crime and recalled in detail that evening in a recent prison interview.
It was July 8, 1981. James' brother, Corlenzo, was in trouble with the law and on the run. He and a childhood friend had agreed to drive Corlenzo James to Havana, Fla., so he could lie low with relatives. The trouble was they needed money for gas, Douglas James said.
"Corlenzo said, "Come on, man, let's go rob a liquor store or something,"' Douglas James said. "I said, "Man, we ain't got no time to do no robbing. You're hot. Everyone in the county is after you."'
A bottle of gin and an hour later, Douglas James changed his mind. About 11:30 p.m., he spotted two men and a woman leaving a restaurant near Dale Mabry Highway in Tampa and followed them.
Later, he said, he and his brother raped the woman they had followed home and a 12-year-old girl who was in the apartment while their friend sat in the car. Douglas James recalled how frightened the victims were.
"She said, "Y'all can do anything you want to me, but don't bother the girl,"' Douglas James said.
Corlenzo James raped them both despite her protest, his brother said. Then the brothers tied them up and left them, bruised and terrified, in an empty field.
Months after the woman picked Crotzer out of a photo lineup, an all-white jury convicted him of two counts of sexual assault, as well as armed robbery, burglary, aggravated assault and false imprisonment. Douglas James was convicted on similar charges and sentenced to 100-plus years. Corlenzo James avoided trial with a plea bargain that resulted in a 20-year prison sentence for armed robbery and burglary.