Dec. 31 TEXAS: Investigators tracked KFC case for decades James Stroud remembers sitting at the home of his longtime buddy who had gone missing, offering comfort and encouragement to his friend's parents and pregnant wife. After painful hours of waiting, the phone rang. Almost simultaneously there was a knock on the door. Both messengers brought the same terrible news: David Maxwell was dead. Maxwell had been shot in the head and dumped near an oil field, along with four others who disappeared the night before from the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant where they worked in the small East Texas town of Kilgore. "That's how the whole family found out," recalled Stroud, at the time a 20-year-old college student and a pall bearer at Maxell's funeral. "I can't even tell you what it's like." That 1983 day was one of many Stroud would spend focused on what became known as the Kentucky Fried Chicken killings. Years later, as Rusk County sheriff, he investigated what is 1 of Texas' longest unsolved murder cases, helping lay the foundation for 2 murder indictments announced in November. Now 43, Stroud is convinced divine guidance led him to go from a business major into law enforcement. He's equally certain God was instrumental on the day, as a rookie sheriff, he got a visit from a retired FBI agent who helped breathe new life into the investigation. "I'm at a point at my life where I can look back and know that God knew exactly what he was doing, even when I didn't know it," said Stroud, who now runs a deli and Christian gift shop in downtown Henderson. It was after 10 p.m. on a Friday night in September when robbers showed up at the KFC on the main drag through Kilgore, a town of about 11,000 that was the hub of the 1930s East Texas oil rush. About an hour later, assistant manager Mary Tyler's daughter arrived to pick her up from work. Tyler, 37, wasn't there. Neither were her co-workers Opie Ann Hughes, 39; a Kilgore College fraternity brothers Joey Johnson, 20; Monty Landers, 19; and Maxwell. Investigators would later find blood was on the floor and a cash register tape showing about $2,000 had been in the cash box. On a road that led to an oil field about 15 miles south of Kilgore, an oil field worker that Saturday morning made the ghastly discovery. The five KFC workers had been shot in the head from behind. Maxwell, Johnson, Landers and Tyler were lined up. Hughes was about 50 yards away. "It just doesn't seem like that long ago," Stroud said. "We were just kids. I was just a kid. But at that time, the thing that bothered me the most was that Lana was pregnant. ... She's going to have a baby and she's going to be by herself." In 1990, Stroud joined the Kilgore Police Department. 6 years later, at age 33, he was elected sheriff and inherited an office where "big file cabinets" were filled with KFC case information. "I think there was feeling for a long time that people just didn't think the case could be solved," Stroud said. Not long after taking office, he met retired FBI agent George Kieny, who had spent a good part of his career working the case with the FBI and for a year with the Texas attorney general's office. "I remember asking: Can it be solved? He said he felt it could be," Stroud said. The following year he again bumped into Kieny, and the two talked for a half hour about the case at a downtown Henderson storefront. That was the day, in Stroud's mind, where the investigation took an important turn. He hired Kieny part time. "Instead of trying to come up with some new idea, we decided to look at everything from the beginning, every report that had been written, every statement that had been taken, and gather all the evidence we could gather in the case," Stroud said. The investigation long had been a roller coaster. Multiple locations. Multiple victims. Multiple law enforcement agencies. Multiple tips. Evidence sent to multiple labs. A grand jury investigated in 1985 but returned no indictments. About a decade later, a torn fingernail found on one victim led to an indictment, but capital murder charges were dropped when tests showed the nail was not the suspect's. Kieny had been with the FBI office in Tyler since 1971 and arrived in Kilgore 2 days after the bodies were discovered. His role was to pursue out-of-state leads. After two years, the Texas Rangers, in charge of the investigation, asked that Kieny be assigned to the case full time. Eventually, he had to turn his attention to other cases and away from the KFC killings. "Instead of working at it every day, you worked it when something came up. That's what we did for many years," he said. Kieny retired from the FBI in 1995, and then went to the Texas attorney general's office. He resigned not long after the office lost interest in the KFC case when the fingernail indictments fell through. He continued to stay in touch with Rusk County investigators over the few years, helping them follow-up on leads until Stroud asked him in 2001 to officially work the case again. Once he took the job, Kieny got his first real look at the voluminous files compiled during the early days of the investigation. He re-interviewed people. He obtained a court order to collect a blood sample for DNA testing from the wife of the man initially linked to the fingernail. Again, no real leads. Kieny and Stroud then decided to present their investigation to an annual gathering of law enforcement officers, crime lab specialists, retired and active police from across Texas who routinely consider cold cases for discussion. "A lot of good ideas came out of that, different ways of looking at things, technology that now was available," Stroud said. "And that probably redirected us, bringing old information from an old case into a modern life." About a year later, in 2003, a new grand jury began hearing evidence. They didn't indict, so prosecutors held off on arrest warrants until they could build a stronger case. "It was their feeling that it was in the better interest of the case to wait," Stroud said. "Getting the guy is not the end. It is part of the process. And a lot of time that's hard for people to understand." On Sept. 11, 2001, as a stunned nation focused on the terrorist attacks, Kieny was busy consolidating old blood evidence from various Texas labs. A bloodstain on a box containing cash register tape from KFC, tested using new DNA technology, put Darnell Hartsfield at the scene. He and Romeo Pinkerton had been on a long list of suspects early in the investigation. Hartsfield, 44, was easy to find. The Tyler man had been in a Texas prison since 1995 on a 40-year sentence for delivery of a controlled substance and engaging in organized criminal activity. He told a grand jury in 2003 that he wasn't at the scene, but with the new DNA results, along with earlier witnesses accounts that put Hartsfield at the restaurant that night, prosecutors charged him with perjury. A jury later convicted him and he was sentenced to life in prison. "It was a godsend," Kieny said. "Without DNA, you would just have a real circumstantial situation." Two weeks later, Attorney General Greg Abbott announced the capital murder indictments against Hartsfield and Pinkerton. DNA evidence also has linked Pinkerton, 47, to the scene, Abbott said. The convicted burglar, in and out of prison several times over the years, was arrested in Tyler in August on a warrant for a parole violation. Prison records show Hartsfield was arrested in Smith County for aggravated robbery 3 days after the KFC slayings. He was paroled in 1992, had the parole revoked, was released two years later, and returned to prison in 1995. Stroud, who was sheriff for eight years, wasn't in office when the indictments were announced Nov. 17, leaving late last year after he lost his re-election bid. Still, he and Kieny said they know they did all they could do to help solve the case. "That gives me some personal satisfaction," Kieny said. When Stroud left, Kieny did too. Now 67, Kieny volunteers at the Smith County Sheriff's Department in Tyler, looking at cold cases. He hopes to attend the capital murder trials, which have not yet been scheduled. Stroud said he's lost touch with Lana Maxwell, who gave birth to a boy named David, who would now be 25 years old. "We stayed close for year and half," Stroud said. "She moved. Time went on. She moved on." He said his connection to Maxwell made the case more than just a homicide case to him. The 2 graduated from high school together, went skiing together, spent the night at each other's homes. "When you're personally involved with someone, it just changes the case," Stroud said. "There was a 20-year-old guy whose friend got killed, left a wife and an unborn child. That's what it was to me." (source: The Associated Press) CONNECTICUT: Death penalty debate rages on in Eastern Connecticut June Fontaine of Moosup never wished death on Michael Ross. But she wanted him out of the picture -- to disappear from the lives of the victims he left in his wake. Fontaine is the cousin of Wendy Baribeault, the 17-year-old killed in 1984 and the last of Ross' eight murder victims. On May 13, Ross became the 1st person in 45 years to be executed in New England. Joseph "Mad Dog" Taborsky was executed in the electric chair in Connecticut in 1960. Even with the execution of the convicted serial killer, Fontaine said closure is hard to come by. "It's almost like you can't come to a conclusion about how to feel," Fontaine said. "Subconsciously, I really wanted it. I just wanted people not to talk about him -- to be in everybody's mind at all times." Though she never looked forward to Ross' execution, Fontaine admitted a certain satisfaction in putting an end to the spotlight that followed Ross through years of legal wrangling. Ross, the Ivy-League-educated former insurance salesman from Griswold, admitted murdering eight young women, 6 of them in Eastern Connecticut in the 1980s. He strangled and raped most of his victims. Even though there were legal appeals still available to him, Ross pushed for his own death. It spawned national attention from the media and death penalty foes who tried to use the opportunity to push for the end of the death penalty in the state. The delays only served to fuel contention by death penalty supporters that the state's laws needed examining. Death penalty opposition forces warned of an impending move to kill more people. The legislature fell short in support for abolishing the state law. "We always thought the votes were not there, but many people thought it was important to have that debate," said State Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven, head of the judiciary committee. Lawlor is against the death penalty. "It's public policy that seems to be losing steam," Lawlor contends. Lawlor said fewer death sentences are being handed down across the country and he sees a decline in public opinion. He points to New York and Massachusetts, 2 states that have made no progress in revising their death penalty laws. Robert Nave, executive director of the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty, said the Ross execution is an example of one of the things wrong with the state's law. "Everybody talks about the victims, how they continue to be traumatized. What do we do? Spend 20 years executing a man -- revictimizing families through the media," Nave said. "Because there is a death penalty, Michael Ross' story is the story of the year and continues to make headline news." Nave points to the recent case of a Plainfield man charged with a capital felony in the death of Woodstock jogger Judith Nilan. Scott Deojay is charged with a capital felony in the case, which carries the possibility of the death penalty. "His name is in the newspaper again, because we have given him the status," Nave said "How many times are we going to drag these people through the ringer? When May 13, 2006, rolls around, the families will again be revictimized." Closure is what victims yearned for in the continuing debate before Ross was executed by lethal injection. But Lawlor points out Ross was executed, after several false starts because of outside intervention, only because he wanted it. "Can we actually execute someone that doesn't want to be executed?" he asks. Attorney T.R. Paulding, who provided the legal aid necessary to see Ross through to the end, said his experience with Ross fighting opposition reinforced his support for a repeal of the death penalty on moral and philosophical grounds. "He was not the poster boy for the death penalty as people thought," Paulding said. "One of the things he was always pushing for was to get it over with." Paulding said that if Ross had been sentenced to life in prison in 1987, "he would have been history. Nobody would have been talking about Michael Ross anymore." Nave said, "What do we do. Keep (the state's death penalty law) the way it is and take 20 years and spend millions of dollars to execute someone, or speed up the progress and inevitably execute an innocent person." State Rep. Steve Mikutel, D-Griswold, believes what Ross finally got was justice. He contends it was the very people eager to save Ross and abolish the state's death penalty who are to blame for using delay tactics to pursue their own agenda in Ross' execution. "They made a mockery of the law. Every time we got to the point, it was postponed or delayed. People lost faith in the system over the years of delays. When Michael Ross was executed, it restored faith in the justice system and sent a message to all killers and would-be killers." "They didn't care about Michael Ross, they were using him to try and eliminate the death penalty," Mikutel said. "They would have allowed this thing to go on forever. He was a tool to achieve their ends and that flies in the face of what the people of Connecticut want." As for closure, Mikutel, whose district remains intimately affected by Ross' deeds, said, "a lot of people do feel closure." (source: Norwich Bulletin) PENNSYLVANIA: Montco serial killer gets death penalty "John killed Mommy." And he also killed the little girl who uttered those words. And he killed Mommys sister. And, some 5 years earlier, he killed another young Montgomery County woman. "John" now will pay for those murders with his own life. A jury, and then a judge, sentenced convicted serial killer John C. Eichinger to the death penalty for the Good Friday stabbing deaths of 27-year-old Heather Greaves, her 23-year-old sister Lisa Greaves and Heathers three-year-old daughter Avery Johnson. The three were stabbed to death on Good Friday at the Greaves family home in the 500 block of Kingwood Road, King of Prussia. Eichinger, 33, of Somers Point, N.J., also received an automatic life sentence for the July 6, 1999, stabbing death of 20-year-old Jennifer Still in her Bridgeport apartment. Eichinger is the largest convicted mass-murderer in Montgomery County history. "I think he should die, not only because the law requires it but because he is an evil monster who preyed on a small child and young women," said Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr., who personally prosecuted the case with co-counsel Assistant District Attorney Carolyn Flannery. "The public is much better off without him in it," said Castor, who has been involved with the case since the outset when he arrived at the Greaves residence shortly after the slayings were reported. Family members of Eichingers victims agreed with Castor. "In my assessment of this horrendous tragedy perpetrated by John Charles Eichinger, there is no justice that can satisfy me short of his termination and no restoration that can replace what was lost," said George Greaves, who discovered the bodies of his 2 daughters and granddaughter upon returning home from work on Good Friday. "He deserves the death penalty," said Wendy Lavin, Stills mother and the cofounder of the Montgomery County Chapter of Parents of Murdered Children. "No amount of time spent in prison could ever make up for the agony and suffering he caused Jennifer," said Lavin of Mont Clare. "He is a violent man who has no regard for life and no respect for the law." The details of the murders were provided by statements Eichinger gave authorities, letters he wrote from prison to one of his 3 brothers and a journal that he kept. Eichinger traveled from the New Jersey home that he shared with his mother on Good Friday, March 25, to kill Heather Greaves because she was entering into a romantic relationship with another man while never giving him a chance. Arriving at the Greaves family residence in the 500 block of Kingwood Road, King of Prussia, Eichinger waited until her father left for work before going into the house to confront her. The 2 argued, with Eichinger ending the argument when he began stabbing her with a large hunting knife he brought to the home. Witnessing the stabbing was Avery, who screamed, "John killed Mommy," and racing towards the bathroom where her Aunt Lisa was. Realizing that the young girl could identify him, Eichinger slashed her in the neck as she fled. Hearing Avery cry out, Lisa opened the bathroom door and saw Avery on the floor of the hallway. Eichinger then attacked her, stabbing her more than 35 times and slashing her throat.Before returning to finish off Heather, Eichinger stabbed Avery once again, this time through the back with such force that the tip of the knife came through the little girls chest. Eichinger, who was spotted by a neighbor leaving the Greaves home that morning in a blood-covered shirt, returned to New Jersey and later that day reported to work at the supermarket. The lifeless bodies of the Greaves sisters and the young child were discovered late that afternoon by the sisters father when he returned home from work. While investigating the murders, authorities noted similarities in the location and type of stab wounds suffered by the 3 victims and those suffered by Still in the unsolved murder that occurred 5 years earlier in Bridgeport. Authorities questioned Eichinger that night at the supermarket and, after first denying any involvement, subsequently gave statements confessing to all 4 murders. (source: Pottstown Mercury News) VIRGINIA: A Light on Justice Denied A harrowing postscript to official justice is taking place in Virginia, where the discovery of a forgotten generation's blood samples in old forensic files has led to modern DNA tests that have already cleared five inmates convicted of rape, with hundreds of other felony cases to be examined. As cheering as the recognition of their innocence has been for the five, who together lost about 90 years behind bars, a sad truth is emerging about the frequency of wrongful convictions in the criminal justice system. The two latest proofs of innocence emerged from a random sampling of just 29 old rape cases from the 1970's and 80's. Back then, Mary Jane Burton, a meticulous state serologist who died six years ago, bothered to retain evidence scraps that are now proving weighty in the modern era of forensic DNA tests. The pity is that Ms. Burton's extra step of quiet professionalism is unusual - the procedures still current in much of the nation's justice system would have led to the destruction of such evidence by now. Faced with the startling trove of resurrected evidence, Gov. Mark Warner has done the only thing he could do in good conscience: he has ordered the state to backtrack through hundreds of past convictions that may overlap with the Burton files and to let the DNA chips fall where they may. Commendably, Governor Warner has made Virginia the 1st state to begin such a sweeping review without waiting for court challenges from convicted felons. The Virginia experience evolved from the prodding of the Innocence Project, the legal appeals group that mounts DNA-based challenges on behalf of the wrongfully convicted. The state's look back is especially relevant as forensic lab methods become a target of increasing doubt and criticism across the nation. To "Burton" a case is already a fresh term of art in Richmond, one that deserves to spread through the criminal justice system. (source: Editorial, New York Times) ************************ Brother's downward spiral ends in execution Most Catholic Italian families would be wailing and fingering rosaries. Mine took its cue from my stoic father: We drove 150 miles in silence. What does a family talk about while driving to your brother's execution? I slept most of the trip. When I allowed thoughts, they were these: How far would I sit from my brother as he died on a steel gurney? Would the lethal injection work quickly? Would he finally be at peace and be reunited with the 2-year-old daughter he killed? Three years before America's 1,000th modern-day execution on Dec. 2, the death penalty became more than a debate for my family. We lived it. My brother was No. 797. When my brother was born July 26, 1962, on New York's Long Island, he didn't even get his own name. My parents christened him Michael Joseph Passaro--named after a brother who had died 2 years before of a heart defect after only 4 hours outside the womb. The 2nd of 5 children, Michael was always considered our family's "problem" child. He was a mediocre student with little self-esteem. He was a follower, not a leader. He hated to fight _ even to defend himself from bullies. That duty fell to me, his older sister by 13 months. One day in 6th grade when we were walking home from school, 2 bullies followed close behind with plans to beat up my little brother. When one of the boys pushed Michael to provoke a fight, I stepped between them. Let's just say he and his buddy never bothered my brother again. Michael often was my companion growing up; he even tagged along on outings with my friends. He lacked his own social and life skills. I nicknamed him "Meekie," and everyone assumed it was a variation of Michael. But it actually was a play on the word "meek." Even a stint in the Navy did little to build Michael's confidence or self-worth. Always na J ive, he ended up completing his tour of service in a Philadelphia brig after accepting a gift of old tools from a superior on board his duty ship. Michael's superior told him the tools were going to be discarded anyway, so he should have them. Michael was arrested while trying to cart the tools off the USS Hunley, a sub-tender. It never crossed his mind that once something was government property, it always was. His ignorance cost him an honorable discharge. Michael fared no better with women than with men. They rejected him. That was until he met Donna Jean Knapp. Donna was just out of a troubled marriage and had a daughter, Missy, about 7. Michael met her through his job at Kings Park Psychiatric Center on Long Island. She was a nurse. He was an orderly. She saw my brother as a loving, tenderhearted man - the opposite of her alcoholic and abusive ex-husband. I liked Donna - she saw through Michael's eccentricities. She encouraged him to go to school to become a nurse himself because he enjoyed caring for people. The couple married in February 1988 and settled on Long Island. Five months later, the unthinkable happened. After Donna and Michael played a game of darts at home, Michael went to sleep. Donna heard a car slam into a utility pole at the end of their street. While Michael slept, she ran to the scene to nurse the victims. That's when a wire knocked loose from the pole whipped Donna and launched her 50 feet, over a hedge. Donna died the next morning on the operating table. She was buried in the family plot the couple had bought just months before. For the next 8 years, Michael's life was marked by grief, self-pity and despondency. He tried to continue with school, but dropped out. He changed jobs over and over--electrician, cabbie, ambulance driver, paramedic. He turned to cocaine and alcohol and began a gradual descent into darkness. He hit rock bottom, or so we thought, when he got drunk and stabbed a friend with a 2 1/2-inch pocketknife for refusing to give him his car keys. His friend was trying to prevent Michael from driving drunk. The knife wounds were superficial, and the friend refused to press charges. But Michael ended up on probation and was ordered to get counseling. In 1995, after completing his probation and counseling, Michael moved to South Carolina to live with our retired parents in Longs, west of North Myrtle Beach. Michael enrolled at Carolina Coastal Community College and worked at a kidney dialysis center. He continued with counseling on his own and was prescribed Zoloft to treat his depression. At the dialysis center, Michael began a relationship with the director, a former nurse named Karen Monk Martin. She was older--a single mother of two grown girls. They married Jan. 18, 1996, and by March, Karen was pregnant with Michael's child. The family's joy would be shortlived. Margaret Ann Passaro was an angel, a gift from God. She was born Nov. 19, 1996--11 months after Michael and Karen married--and looked just like her daddy did when he was a baby. During the fall and winter of 1997, and into the spring of 1998, it became evident to my parents that all was not well in Michael's household. We all thought it was typical newlywed problems, and with a new baby, adjustments were probably in order. But things were brewing beneath the surface, things that no one saw coming. When Michael brought Maggie to visit, his wife stopped accompanying them. When I would telephone my brother, he was nervous about talking too long, afraid of upsetting his wife. 2 years after their union, Karen announced she wanted a divorce and to return to her native Virginia with Maggie. Michael gained custody of Maggie from Fridays through Mondays. Even so, Michael began stewing, telling his family that Karen would do everything in her power to eventually win full custody. Michael's anger increased after every contact with Karen. He also spoke of his dead wife, Donna, more and more--how he missed her, how he wanted to be with her. He decided he would be better off being with Donna again and taking Maggie with him. If a murder-suicide hurt Karen, he thought, so much the better. Then Maggie's second birthday arrived, a milestone that would set Michael's plan in motion. Karen would not let Michael speak with his daughter by phone to wish her a happy birthday. Inside, Michael boiled over--even though he would be with Maggie the next 4 days, including Saturday, when he planned to throw her a birthday bash. On Monday morning, Michael awoke Maggie from her new "big girl" bed, a gift he had given her just 2 days before. He got her ready for day care and prepared himself for class. Michael did not take Maggie to day care but instead to her mother's condominium. He climbed out of his white Ford Windstar minivan and left Maggie strapped in her car seat. A witness told police he saw Michael open the rear door and pour something inside. Then Michael got back in the driver's seat. The witness described hearing an explosion, and then saw Michael jump from the minivan. It is clear to me that Michael had no intention of surviving, but he succumbed to human reflex: When burned, get away from the fire. In addition to finding Maggie's remains, firefighters also found the remnants of a suicide note that had been typewritten 3 months earlier: "I never wanted my first wife to die or for me to fall apart afterwards, but I did," Michael had written. "I never wanted my 2nd marriage to end in divorce, but it all happened. I'm tired of fighting. "I just realized that I was never supposed to be happy," the note read. Visiting Michael that day was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. He had a cloth over his genitals, but the rest of his body was exposed - covered only by a petroleum-jelly-looking sheen. Tubes protruded from his nose and arms, and he was surrounded by monitors. He could barely talk and when he did, it was a low raspy sound. Mucus that filled his burned lungs often blocked his airway. He coughed and hacked so much that besides wanting to cry, I wanted to puke. Then he spoke. "Maggie's gone." With tears in my eyes, I gulped hard, nodded and swallowed. "I know," I said. "I wanted to go with her," he said. I gulped hard again, trying to be brave, " ... I know." "She's with Donna now," Michael said. I had to turn away. I was about to lose it. I needed air and inhaled deeply. Against his public defenders' wishes, Michael pleaded guilty, and a judge imposed the death penalty. "It's pretty funny how the system works," he wrote in his suicide note. "I get visitation with my daughter, and I'm allowed to end our lives from existence with the help of the courts and my wife. I guess that I'm getting the last laugh now, Karen." Only 2 of us would be allowed to witness the execution: My mother and I had already volunteered. "I was there when he came into this world; I'll be there when he leaves," she said. The witness room was much smaller than I imagined. We were guided to two front-row seats against the far wall, in front of a huge window. On our side of the window was plain glass. On the other, huge shutters covered the upper part of the window above our heads. A heavy curtain material, impossible to see through, covered the rest of the window. The silence was eerie, but it screamed in my ears. Finally, as it whirled all about me, screeching like a banshee, a sound broke through the silence from behind the curtain - muffled voices. We knew this was what Michael wanted. He told us so. We were there to support him in his decision. I was never worried for his soul, because for him, hell had been his life. At 6 p.m. sharp, the curtain parted. My heart seemed to pound right out of my chest. My breathing was fast and shallow, as if I had just run a race. My ears were getting warmer. My blouse clung to my back as sweat trickled down. "No!" I told myself. "Never let 'em see you sweat." My brother was lying on the table waiting to see us. He wore the green jumpsuit we had grown accustomed to seeing. He was covered with a sheet from the waist down and his arms were outstretched as if on a cross. His left hand was covered in surgical tape and was stretched out to Mom and me. If not for the glass, we could have touched him. His eyes met ours. We were glad to see him again--one last time - and he us. Everyone else in the room faded from our consciousness. We mouthed our silent goodbyes to each other, the 3 of us. Michael mouthed the words "It's over." When it came time for the condemned's final words, he had none. He saved whatever he had to say for us only. Slowly sleep inched through to Michael's veins. His eyelids shut halfway and then his eyes glazed over. In only a few seconds, they were closed. Moments later, a slight smile crept to his lips. It was done. Michael finally could be at peace. (source: Gina Farthing, The News Virginian) FLORIDA: Dedge case raises issues for lawmakers----Compensation for people who have been wrongly imprisoned leads the list. When Florida lawmakers agreed earlier this month to give Wilton Dedge $2 million, they concluded a lengthy struggle by the wrongfully imprisoned Brevard County man and his supporters to win compensation from the state. But the broader policy questions that swirled around Dedge's case -- such as how to compensate future victims of wrongful incarceration and whether to restrict DNA testing among Florida inmates -- remain unresolved. After all, Dedge, who spent 22 years in prison until a DNA test proved he did not commit the 1981 rape of which he had been convicted, will not be the last inmate to confront lawmakers about a similar issue. This summer, one year after Dedge walked out of prison, 67-year-old Luis Diaz of Miami was released after serving 26 years when DNA testing cleared him of multiple rapes. Diaz has not sought compensation, but some lawmakers expect that he will. And advocates are certain more innocent people are behind bars. "Even though our system is, in my opinion, the best system, it's not a perfect system," said Rep. John Quinones, the Kissimmee Republican who helped negotiate Dedge's compensation package. When the Legislature convenes in March for its next regular session, lawmakers appear certain to revisit a proposal offered last year by Sen. Daniel Webster, R-Winter Garden, that would put in place a procedure for how to compensate people wrongfully imprisoned. Under Webster's plan, victims could negotiate settlements with the Attorney General's Office of up to $5 million, based on factors such as lost wages or salary, legal fees and the cost of future psychological counseling. Victims unhappy with the amount offered could sue for a higher settlement in court. Advocates call the plan a good start. But they also say a number of details must be worked out. For one thing, Webster's plan would have prevented victims of wrongful incarceration from receiving compensation if they originally pleaded guilty. That's a problem because statistics show that many people plead guilty out of fear or on the advice of a lawyer. Nationwide, nearly a quarter of the 168 people exonerated by DNA testing since 1989 confessed, admitted guilt or gave incriminating statements to law-enforcement officials, according to New York-based The Innocence Project. "In a death-penalty state, people will plead to anything less than death . . .," said Jenny Greenberg, director of Florida Innocence Initiative, a nonprofit in Tallahassee that works to free wrongly imprisoned people. Greenberg has other objections, such as a provision that would not allow compensation for intangible factors, such as pain and suffering. But advocates are even more alarmed by a competing proposal in the House that would allow the Legislature to compensate all future cases of wrongful incarceration on a case-by-case basis. The approach would be similar to the way people who have won large awards in civil lawsuits against local governments and state agencies must petition the Legislature to pay the full amounts. Lawmakers can deny the claims or award smaller amounts. Greenberg said that approach offers victims little certainty. Dedge, for example, only received his award after nearly a year of wrangling with lawmakers and with the help of attorney Sandy D'Alemberte, the former Florida State University president, and lobbyist Guy Spearman, whose client lists includes corporate giants such as Wal-Mart, Philip Morris and Verizon. The House proposal also would encourage lawmakers to fashion compensation packages around benefits such as free tuition to state universities and free health care, in addition to money. Quinones, who is chairman of the House Claims Committee, said he is confident lawmakers can find a middle ground. In the meantime, a consensus is building around a push to eliminate a deadline for Florida inmates to seek DNA testing that could exonerate them. Under current law, people have four years from the time they are convicted to request a DNA test. Prisoners convicted before 2001 have until July 1 of next year to seek such tests. A House bill to eliminate the deadline, which Quinones is sponsoring, already has won unanimous approval from one committee. The Senate version, meanwhile, will be pushed by Sen. Alex Villalobos, R-Miami, an influential lawmaker in line to become Senate president in 2008. Villalobos, a former prosecutor, said the reluctance to get rid of the deadline is waning as people have become more comfortable with DNA testing and more confident in its results. "I think people accept that this really works and it's worth doing," Villalobos said. Eliminating the deadlines, he added, is "the right thing to do." (source: Orlando Sentinel, Dec. 29)
