High court denounces prosecutors' conduct

Overturning a Hillsborough murder conviction, the state Supreme Court says it's seeing too much misconduct there.

By JO BECKER

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 2, 1999

TALLAHASSEE -- The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday granted a new trial to a man sentenced to death in a 1995 Tampa murder-for-hire scheme, saying that Hillsborough prosecutors are guilty of "egregious and inexcusable prosecutorial misconduct."

In a unanimous opinion, the Supreme Court sent an unusually pointed message to prosecutors across the state that overly aggressive tactics in the courtroom are occuring with "unacceptable frequency" and will be dealt with severely.

"This is a very strongly worded case, there's no two ways about it," said Richard Martell, the chief of Capital Appeals for the Attorney General's Office, which handles all death row cases in the Supreme Court level. "The courts are scrutinizing this very closely; they're regarding it as a very high priority issue."

The court cited six other death penalty convictions dating as far back as 1982 that have been overturned because of misconduct by prosecutors. But it called the Tampa murder trial of Walter Ruiz, 40, "one of the worst examples we have ever encountered." Ruiz was sentenced to death in 1996 in a case police called a real-life soap opera. Prosecutors argued that Ruiz was the hitman hired by a Tampa couple, Delio and Lotia Romanes, to kill Mrs. Romanes' former boyfriend, Rolando Landrian, a Tampa grocery store owner. Both Romaneses are serving life sentences.

The Supreme Court took the unusual step of asking the Florida Bar to review the two prosecutors in the case, Karen Cox and Lyann Goudie.

Cox, previously a high profile prosecutor for the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office, was accused by a Florida Bar disciplinary committee last month of providing false information to the court in a separate 1997 Internet sex case. She is currently a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Tampa.

According to the state Supreme Court, both prosecutors "crossed the line of zealous advocacy by a wide margin" by trying "to tilt the playing field and obtain a conviction and death sentence" in five improper ways.

The court said Goudie demeaned and ridiculed Ruiz by calling him "Pinocchio" and then invited the jury to "convict Ruiz of first-degree murder because he is a liar."

In another instance, the court said, Cox improperly told the jury about how her father had received a diagnosis of cancer but nevertheless served in the Persian Gulf war.

"This blatant appeal to jurors' emotions ... equated Ms. Cox's father's noble sacrifice for his country with the jury's moral duty to sentence Ruiz to death," the court said.

Television legal dramas may not portray it, but there are strict rules about what prosecutors can and cannot say during their closing arguments.

"The role of counsel in closing argument is to assist the jury in analyzing that evidence, not to obscure the jury's view with personal opinion, emotion and non-record evidence," according to the court's opinion.

Cox said Thursday that the legal ethics code prohibits her from commenting directly on the Supreme Court's decision.

"I have tried a lot of cases and I've tried a lot of murder trials and I prosecuted murder trials because I believe it is important to make sure justice is done when aninnocent life has been taken," Cox said. "I certainly have been called aggressive before, but I don't view that as a criticism in the context in which it has been said."

Hillsborough County Assistant State Attorney Pam Bondi would not comment on the ruling or on whether her office would retry Ruiz. Goudie, who no longer works for the office, could not be reached for comment.

Ruiz, who is from the Orlando area and is imprisoned at Union Correctional Institution, was described by his lawyer as "very happy" with the opinion. It is unlikely he would be released pending a new trial.

The Ruiz case is the latest example of the court cracking down on prosecutors who overstep the bounds. In its opinion, the Supreme Court cited six other death row cases in which it has either ordered new sentencing hearings or overturned convictions and ordered new trials.

The two cases in which convictions were overturned both involved crimes in the Tampa Bay area. In 1988, Joseph Garron won a new trial after he was convicted of fatally shooting his wife and stepdaughter in their Pasco County home. In 1990, Frederick Nowitzke won a new trial after he was sentenced to death in a Bradenton case involving the attempted murder of his stepfather, former Cincinnati Reds pitcher Clay Carroll, and the murder of his mother and stepbrother.

Prosecutors say that appeals courts have also been getting stricter in recent years in non-death row cases. Just this week, the 2nd District Court of Appeal cited improper conduct on the part of a prosecutor when it threw out the conviction of a man accused of stabbing to death his best friend's former wife. The killing occurred in St. Petersburg.

Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe said prosecutors have been put on notice.

"They are telling you flat out that you better watch what you say," said McCabe, who is also the president of the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association.

But McCabe said he doesn't mind.

"If it keeps people from crossing the line, that's good," he said. "A good lawyer can be zealous and can be creative without crossing that line."

The Supreme Court does not always overturn a conviction in cases involving misconduct by the prosecutor. If the court finds that the jury would have reached a guilty verdict despite the misconduct, it can simply reprimand the prosecutor, as it did in a 1985 case, Hill vs. State.

But the Supreme Court said the Ruiz case is "precisely the scenario we feared in Hill -- a bitterly contested swearing match between competing witnesses, including eyewitnesses on both sides, where a defendant's life hangs in the balance."

Steven Bolotin, an assistant public defender who specializes in death penalty cases and who handled Ruiz's appeal, said that made Cox's misconduct all the more outrageous. "This was a case where I had grave doubts about whether Mr. Ruiz was guilty," Bolotin said. "The jury should not be feeling sympathy for her -- that has no place in the courtroom."

-- Times staff writer Sue Carlton contributed to this report, and information from the Associated Press was used.