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By JAMIE MALERNEE
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 19, 2000
BROOKSVILLE -- The lawyer for a death row inmate who kidnapped and murdered a Tampa woman has been barred from questioning jurors to see if their conviction was tainted by racism.
At least for now.
Hernando County Circuit Judge Richard Tombrink ruled Tuesday that defense attorney John Jackson of Tallahassee could not question the jury because he had no specific proof of misconduct when a jury convicted Alfred L. Fennie in 1992.
"The law allows (an) interview when there is evidence of fraud," Tombrink said. "Here, counsel for the defendant, based purely on speculation, seeks to go on essentially a fishing expedition on issues that are 8 years old."
The judge said he would reconsider if Jackson could come up with more detailed evidence that racism influenced the jury's decision.
Jackson filed a motion in March asking the court to throw out Fennie's death sentence based in part on "racial hysteria" that factored into his conviction.
Two years before Fennie's trial, a white 19-year-old named Russell Coats died in a racially motivated beating in Brooksville. Jackson said the effects of that killing were still being felt, and that the community was looking for someone to blame.
In his motion, Jackson also alleges:
Fennie's trial lawyer failed to ask jurors enough questions to "ferret out racists."
The state attorney's office played up Fennie's alleged rape of his victim, Mary Elaine Shearin. Shearin was white; Fennie is black.
Undaunted by Tombrink's ruling, Jackson said he feels fairly confident he will be able to bring forth specific evidence of racism. Since a story on his motion ran in the St. Petersburg Times, Jackson told the judge he has been deluged with phone calls from Hernando County residents complaining about the treatment minority defendants have received from public defender Alan Fanter, Fennie's trial lawyer, and Circuit Judge Jack Springstead, who presided over Fennie's trial.
Lawyers for the state called Jackson's allegations "sheer speculation" and said that many of the phone calls Jackson has received are most likely from criminals angry about the outcome of their cases.
"These people may be defendants that have a grudge with (the Department of Corrections) or a judge because he did what he was sworn to do," said Assistant State Attorney Jim McCune.
Before Tombrink's ruling, McCune argued that the judge should ban Jackson from interviewing jurors because Jackson is assuming racism was a problem and searching for ways to justify his presumption and get his client's sentence thrown out.
"It's the cart before the horse," McCune said. "There is nothing to give reasonable suspicion."
During Fennie's 1992 trial, prosecutors said the Tampa man and co-defendants Michael Frazier and Pamela Colbert kidnapped Shearin at a Tampa housing project, and Fennie raped her when she would not withdraw money with her bank card.
The trio then drove Shearin to a remote part of Ridge Manor in eastern Hernando County, where Fennie shot her and stuffed her into the trunk of a Dade City mechanic's car, prosecutors said. Frazier and Colbert were sentenced to life in prison.