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Waiting for justice

How much more time is it going to take before Hillsborough County prosecutors are satisfied that Alan Crotzer is innocent and should have his convictions set aside? Prosecutors have known at least since February, if not years before, that there were serious questions surrounding Crotzer's guilt. Since late October they have had the results of a DNA test excluding Crotzer as a rapist. In 1982, Crotzer was sentenced to more than 100 years after being found guilty of raping a 12-year-old girl and a 38-year-old woman during a robbery with two other men. It was a brutal crime and the sentence matched the severity of the act. But as a result of thousands of volunteer hours by attorneys and investigators, coordinated by the New York-based Innocence Project, substantial new evidence pointing to Crotzer's innocence has been unearthed. The most conclusive proof is a DNA test excluding Crotzer as a possible rapist in the one case where there were semen samples to test.

In February, before the DNA tests were complete, Crotzer's attorneys filed a motion asking that his conviction be thrown out. The motion detailed new testimony by Douglas James, one of the other men convicted of the crime, who says that Crotzer wasn't there that night but another man was. That man is still at large. James' sisters have since corroborated this version of events and the testimony is consistent with Crotzer's four alibi witnesses who have said all along that he was with them the night of the crime.

The Hillsborough State Attorney's Office should be commended for its cooperation with the Innocence Project and its willingness to consider new evidence in a very old case - an approach other state attorneys should adopt. Prosecutors say they are still considering whether to support Crotzer's motion to dismiss the charges and sentence, or whether to seek a new trial against Crotzer or oppose the defense motion entirely. In the meantime, a man who has maintained his innocence all along, is demonstrably innocent of rape and appears to have had nothing to do with the crime, continues serving prison time. He's already clocked nearly 24 years, more than half his life.

If the state attorney is moving slowly in a surfeit of caution to protect public safety, then the office is going about it backward. Strong evidence points to Crotzer's innocence while the man who witnesses - including one of the perpetrators - say actually participated in the crimes is walking free. An investigation should have been launched long ago to clear this matter up.

Like Wilton Dedge, who was just awarded $2-million by the state for his 22 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, Crotzer appears to be the victim of a terrible injustice. When an innocent man spends his best years behind bars, the state has a duty not only to provide compensation but to thoroughly review what went wrong and how such devastating mistakes can be prevented in the future. But first, it has to let him go.

[Last modified January 13, 2006, 01:45:18]