Have I mentioned that I’m not a fan of the death penalty?

From my friend Chuck Shepherd at News of the Weird we have this item in his newsletter today: "I'm Absolutely Positive": In late 2004, two men who had been convicted of rape based on confident identifications by the victims (Wilton Dedge of Florida and Dennis Brown of Louisiana) were exonerated after having served 22 and 19 years, respectively, before DNA evidence showed that the crimes were almost certainly committed by others. In the trials, Dedge's accuser had stuck to her recollection even after six alibi witnesses had come forward, and Brown's accuser said she observed her rapist's face up close for 20 minutes and was certain Brown was the man.

Courtesy of the Innocence Project, let’s explore this a little further, eh?

Wilton Dedge:
Year of Incident: 1981
Jurisdiction: Florida
Charge: Sexual Battery, Assault, Burglary
Conviction: Sexual Battery, Aggravated Battery, Burglary
Sentence: Life
Year of Conviction: 1982, 1984 (retrial)
Year of Exoneration: 2004
Sentence Served: 22 years
Real perpetrator found? Not yet
Compensation? Not yet

Eight years after he requested postconviction DNA testing, Wilton Dedge has been exonerated and released from Florida prison. In 1982, Dedge was convicted in Brevard County, Florida, of sexual battery, aggravated battery, and burglary. He was sentenced to two concurrent life sentences.

THE CRIME: The victim was attacked in her home on December 8, 1981. After coming home in the afternoon, she heard a sound while changing clothes and turned to find a man armed with a blade. He cut off her clothes and raped her vaginally and anally. During the assault, the perpetrator cut the victim all over her body. After the assailant left, the victim contacted her boyfriend and was taken to the emergency room, where a rape kit and the victim’s clothes were collected.

THE CASE: Dedge maintained his innocence, but was convicted in May 1982. His conviction was reversed in 1983, but he was again convicted in August 1984. At trial, the prosecution relied on the victim’s eyewitness identification, microscopic hair comparison, snitch testimony, and dog sniffing evidence to secure the conviction - evidence eventually disproved by DNA testing.

Dedge maintained his innocence from the moment of arrest. His mother and brother testified that he had not even been in town when the crime occurred. Several alibi witnesses also testified on his behalf.

THE IDENTIFICATION: Four days after the crime, the victim saw a man in a convenience store and told her sister that he resembled her attacker, only he was shorter. The victim’s sister identified the man as "Walter Hedge". In January 1982, the victim told investigators about the man and the police arrested Wilton Dedge’s brother, Walter. After seeing Walter’s picture, the victim’s sister told police it was Wilton, not Walter, that the victim had seen at the store. Wilton Dedge’s picture was placed in a photographic array and the victim identified him. He was immediately arrested and charged.

The victim’s initial description of her assailant, given at the hospital, was six feet tall and approximately 160 pounds. She had been able to compare their relative heights before and during the attack. She also stated that the perpetrator was big and muscular, able to throw her around easily.

At the time of the crime, Wilton Dedge weighed 125 pounds and is 5'5" tall. At the second trial, the investigating officer testified for the first time that Dedge was wearing boots with higher than normal heels to compensate for the difference between the victim’s description and Dedge’s appearance.

THE BIOLOGICAL EVIDENCE: The prosecution’s hair expert testified that two pubic hairs were found on the victim’s bed. One was similar to hairs taken from the victim. The other was from a male and Dedge could not be eliminated as a possible source of that hair. The hair proved to be the only physical evidence linking Dedge to the crime.

Sperm was found on a swab in the rape kit, but no blood typing results were ascertained.

THE SNITCH AND THE DOG: To complete their case, prosecutors relied on the testimony of Clarence Zacke, a jailhouse snitch, and John Preston, who presented dog-sniffing evidence.

Zacke was a known snitch and, at the time of Dedge’s trial, received a drastic reduction in his sentences. He claimed that Dedge confessed to the crime while they were being transported together in a prison van.

Preston’s dog allegedly, after sniffing an item with Dedge’s scent on it, alerted its owner to Dedge’s presence in the victim’s house. Preston has since been discredited by prosecutors and Federal Postal Inspectors in several states.

POSTCONVICTION: In 1996, Dedge was one of the first Florida inmates to seek postconviction DNA testing, several years before the state passed its 2001 law providing for such testing. He won that motion in 2000, and, in June 2001, mitochondrial DNA testing proved that the pubic hair did not come from Dedge. The Innocence Project and local counsel, Milton Hirsch, asked the court to overturn Dedge’s conviction on grounds of innocence. The State, however, argued that because Dedge had won access to DNA testing too early – before there was a law governing postconviction DNA testing – he could not benefit from the new law, or get into court with new evidence of innocence.

For three years, the State opposed Dedge’s motions on procedural grounds, at one time admitting in court that they would oppose Dedge’s release even if they knew that he was absolutely innocent. These paradoxical arguments were roundly rejected last summer by Brevard Circuit Judge Silvernail and again by the 5th District Court of Appeal in April 2004.

Further testing was ordered by the court on the semen evidence found on the anal swab recovered from the rape kit. Initial testing had yielded only two markers because the sample was degraded. Y-chromosome STR testing was utilized in the final round of testing. The results excluded Dedge as the contributor of the spermatozoa, conclusively proving his innocence for a second time.

Dennis Brown
Year of Incident: 1984
Jurisdiction: Louisiana
Charge: Rape
Conviction: Rape
Sentence: Life
Year of Conviction: 1985
Year of Exoneration: 2005
Sentence Served: 19 years
Real perpetrator found? Not yet
Compensation? Not yet

The Innocence Project hasn’t posted the details of Dennis Brown’s tragedy yet, but the man has been released from jail. Sadly, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Brown “was released from the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola in October after two tests of existing DNA evidence excluded him as a suspect in the 1984 rape. A judge released him on $50,000 bond and placed him under home incarceration while prosecutors used their one-year limit to decide whether to prosecute him again.” Finally though, on January 31, 2005 all charges against Brown were dropped. Which to me, poor dumb bastard that I am, makes sense, since the DNA tests excluded him as the rapist. Then again, what do I know?

OK, why have I posted all this? I posted it to show again why I’m against the death penalty. If these two men had murdered their “victims,” they would be dead now and we never would have known that two more miscarriages of justice had occurred. I suspect that in the 20 years or so these men spent in the slammer they would have exhausted their appeals. Imagine the anger and frustration at being locked up for life for something that you didn’t do. Imagine then being murdered by the state for something you didn’t do. Ask your local pro-death penalty bible-banging bigot: WWJE? Who would Jesus Execute?