A judge orders the release of a retarded inmate in the face of DNA evidence and doubts.
©Associated Press
© St. Petersburg Times,
published June 16, 2001
MIAMI -- A judge on Friday lifted the murder and rape convictions of a retarded man sent to prison 22 years ago, ordering his immediate release.
Miami-Dade prosecutors asked the judge to vacate Jerry Frank Townsend's convictions even though they believe he committed at least one of the two murders and the rape.
"Given the preferred deficiency in the state's evidence, a lack of trust in its evidence including the obtained confession, and in some cases what may very well be Mr. Townsend's outright innocence, it is abundantly clear that he is the victim of an enormous tragedy," Judge Scott Silverman said.
He said the release order would be faxed immediately to the Department of Corrections. DOC spokeswoman Debbie Buchanan said Townsend would be released from Polk Correctional Institution shortly after it receives the order.
A Broward County judge already had set aside four murder convictions after DNA evidence cleared Townsend of two of the crimes and a review of his confession left the other two in doubt.
Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said Thursday that even though she believes Townsend is guilty of rape and one of the Miami-Dade murders, the convictions have to be set aside because he agreed to plead guilty only because of the Broward convictions.
She said she cannot retry the cases because evidence has since been destroyed and the rape victim and witnesses cannot be found.
Townsend, 49, was arrested in 1979 and charged with raping a pregnant woman in daylight on a downtown Miami street. The victim and two witnesses, including a woman who said she hit him on the head with a bottle during the rape, pointed Townsend out to police a few blocks from the scene.
Detectives investigating the rape asked Townsend about the Miami and Fort Lauderdale murders. Townsend, who has the mental capacity of an 8-year-old and an IQ between 50 and 60, told detectives he committed the crimes.
Defense attorneys say he only told detectives what they wanted to hear to please them.
Miami police Assistant Chief James Chambliss said his department is no longer sure of its case against Townsend.
"It appears there's a possibility that the same person committed those crimes," Chambliss said. "If that's the case, if you find he didn't commit one, he didn't commit the other. . . . There are enough questions present that he may in fact be innocent."
But he does not believe the two detectives working the case, Bruce Roberson and James Boone, intentionally took advantage of Townsend's mental disability to get him to confess to crimes he didn't commit.
"Both of them have good reputations and are well thought of as good investigators. I think they thought they had the right guy. I don't think they did anything deliberate to railroad anybody," he said.
He agreed that the problem with the cases was questioning that led Townsend and Townsend's desire to please the detectives.
"Mr. Townsend liked these guys. He liked the cops, he wanted to be with the cops. They were his buddies and frankly that's a great tool if you get suspects to like you -- that's a good thing," Chambliss said. "He was trying to be helpful to them. . . . That's where the problem came up.