June 28

FLORIDA:

State struggles to save '86 case

The case against convicted murderer Rudolph Holton, on Florida's death
row for 15 years, has been in doubt for months, now that witnesses have
recanted and evidence has been discredited.

But in a last-ditch attempt to save the case Wednesday, prosecutors said
they wanted to test one more piece of evidence to determine whether
Holton's fingerprints and DNA are on it, said defense attorney Martin
McClain.

"This is a fishing expedition," McClain said. "They just want to cover up
mistakes made 15 years ago by the detectives who handled the case. They
have absolutely no evidence, and now they want to submit this for DNA.

"They want to stall so they can keep my client in jail longer. He's
already been there for 15 years for something he did not do," McClain
added.

Prosecutors want the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to test shards
of glass from the green bottle that was used to rape Katrina Graddy in
June 1986, McClain said.

Though the 17-year-old's body was set afire after she was raped and
strangled at her house on Scott Street, remnants of the bottle were found
scattered about the room where she was attacked and have been kept in a
brown paper bag since the slaying, court records show.

Assistant State Attorney Pam Bondi said McClain and attorneys at the
Capital Collateral Regional Council, the agency that represents Florida's
death row inmates, want only certain pieces of evidence tested.

"We want it all tested, not just some of it," Bondi said. "15 years ago,
the citizens of Hillsborough County and the Florida Supreme Court decided
they had enough evidence to convict Rudolph Holton of 1st-degree murder.
We stand by that."

But that evidence and the case against Holton have since become
questionable.

Witnesses for the prosecution, who placed Holton at the crime scene the
night Graddy was murdered, have admitted they lied; a missing police
report that could clear Holton recently surfaced; and the results of a
recent DNA test disproved a state witness.

The witness testified that he had seen Holton with a shaving kit the
night Graddy was killed. But a recent DNA test showed hair found in the
shaving kit did not belong to Holton or Graddy. The witness later
admitted he misidentified Holton.

In addition, McClain said Tampa homicide Detectives Kevin Durkin and J.S.
Noblitt neglected to question David Pierson, a Tampa man who Graddy said
had raped and threatened her 10 days before her death.

"Graddy, her mother and her sister all went to the police and told
detectives that Katrina had been raped by Pierson," McClain said. "Police
reports were filled out to this effect. But none of those reports ever
came out in the original trial 15 years ago. They were just discovered
this past March.

"Pierson killed Katrina Graddy because she reported the rape," McClain
said. "A man who was cutting Pierson's hair a few days after the killing
told police that Pierson confessed to the rape and the murder."

Holton was sentenced to death in December 1986 by then-Circuit Judge
Harry Lee Coe III. Coe, who later became Hillsborough state attorney,
committed suicide in July.

This year, McClain and lawyer Linda McDermott fired off a series of
challenges to show that Coe erred in Holton's sentencing. DNA testing did
not exist in 1986, and Holton was convicted largely on the statements of
witnesses - including a jailhouse snitch - whose testimonies have
unraveled.

As a result, Hillsborough Circuit Judge Daniel Perry granted Holton a new
sentencing hearing and is deciding whether he should have a new trial.
That could be determined at a hearing Friday.

(source: Tampa Tribune)