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His time served, he fights to clear his name
By CARY DAVIS © St. Petersburg Times, published February 7, 2001 The case against Matthew Damiani started with a phone call from a friend of his estranged wife. The friend told police in September 1995 that Damiani looked exactly like a sketch of the "pretty boy bandit," a handsome thief wanted by authorities for impersonating a Wells Fargo courier and stealing nearly $30,000 from two St. Petersburg department stores. Detectives learned that Damiani, a state corrections officer, had just quit a part-time job as an ATM specialist with Wells Fargo and never turned in his uniform. And when employees at the department stores picked Damiani's mug shot out of a police photo lineup in November 1995, authorities were certain they had their man. Damiani, who had no criminal record, was arrested on two counts of grand theft, and has fervently maintained his innocence ever since. Nobody has believed him. Not the police. Not a jury. Not an appeals court. Damiani never went to prison, but served 33 days in jail awaiting trial and has completed two years' house arrest. Now Damiani, 39, who lives in Port Richey and works at a nursing home in Dunedin, has evidence that may exonerate him. Another man, a convicted bank robber at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan., has confessed to the crimes for which Damiani was convicted, according to a sworn affidavit by New Port Richey private investigator Mike Holden. During a two-day interview with Holden at Leavenworth in early December, Jeffery Scott Durham described how he committed the Wells Fargo crimes, and he provided details that only the perpetrator could have known, according to the private investigator's affidavit. "He gave a complete confession," Holden said. "I had him write it out." Durham's written confession is included in Damiani's motion for a new trial, filed Monday in Pinellas Circuit Court. In part, it reads, "I Jeffery S. Durham did act/pose as a Wells Fargo guard to obtain monies. . . . I wore a uniform and a bullet proof vest in these instances. I make these statements on my own free will and have been promised nothing in return for my statement. I make this statement to right any wrongs that Mr. Damiani has endured." The statement was witnessed by Holden, one of his assistants and J.R. Smith, a counselor at the prison. Prison policy prevented Smith from talking to the Times about what Durham said during the interview. Holden said he asked Durham, 36, who is serving 134 years for more than a dozen bank robberies in Florida, why he would confess. Durham's reply, according to Holden: "There's honor among thieves. I don't want a man who's never been guilty of anything to be punished for something I did." Damiani's attorney, John Trevena of Largo, said his client is a classic victim of mistaken identity. Trevena said Damiani and Durham look enough alike that the witnesses who viewed the mugs in the photo lineup easily could have mistaken his client for the thief. The witnesses from the two stores described a man much smaller than Damiani, who is 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds. One witness said the thief was 5-foot-7. Another said he was 6-foot-2. They also said the man was between 150 and 185 pounds. All of the witnesses described the thief as movie-star handsome. "This is a case that speaks for how screwed up the system is. You depend on a jury to make an intelligent decision, and it didn't happen," Trevena said. Trevena can't understand why the jury voted to convict, given that Damiani had an alibi for both crimes and fingerprints lifted from a receipt signed by the Wells Fargo impersonator didn't match his client's prints. The first theft occurred at the Byrons department store in South Pasadena on Sept. 5, 1995, about 3:30 p.m. Damiani and his then-girlfriend were in Sarasota that day, they testified at the trial, and they produced a hotel credit card receipt they said proved it. The second theft took place on Oct. 30, 1995, at the Montgomery Ward store at Tyrone Square Mall, less than 30 minutes before Damiani reported to his job at the Largo Correction Camp at 4 p.m. It took a jury about six hours to find Damiani guilty of both counts of grand theft. In addition to house arrest and eight years' probation, he also was ordered to pay back all the money that was stolen. "It's horrific," said Trevena. "He lost his job as a corrections officer. He was publicly humiliated to an extreme degree." Trevena would not allow Damiani to be interviewed by the Times. Damiani is scheduled to make his first public statement today at a news conference, and Trevena said he feared that television stations wouldn't send reporters if his client's comments had already appeared in the newspaper. Damiani had already lost one appeal when he hired Holden last year to clear his name. Holden began by interviewing detectives who worked the Wells Fargo cases. The detectives, James Beining of the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office and George Byrd of the St. Petersburg Police Department, both "expressed lingering doubt about Matthew Damiani's guilt despite his conviction," Holden wrote in his affidavit. Holden also wrote in the affidavit that the detectives provided him with Durham's name and several photographs. Holden then learned that Durham was released from the Hillsborough County Jail in March 1995 and was in the area when the Wells Fargo thefts took place. Based on Holden's affidavit, Trevena alleges in court papers that authorities considered Durham a suspect in the Wells Fargo cases before the trial but never said anything about him to Damiani's defense team, in violation of basic criminal law procedure. Pinellas sheriff's spokeswoman Marianne Pasha denied that Durham had ever been considered a suspect until now. She said Beining never expressed doubt about Damiani's guilt, and only offered Durham's name and picture when Holden asked about "a man on America's Most Wanted." Holden said he stands by his affidavit. Sherwood Coleman, who prosecuted Damiani, said Tuesday that he couldn't remember ever hearing Durham's name before. He would never have knowingly sat on information about another suspect, said Coleman, who is now a private defense attorney in Clearwater. Pasco-Pinellas State Attorney Bernie McCabe said he would look into Damiani's case. "We're going to aggressively investigate it and resolve it as soon as possible," said McCabe.
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