Sightings Received Sunday July 12, 1998 |
Florida
Source Name: Fred M.
Time of Sighting: Just the other day
More than 30 years after they were sentenced to death for two murders they did not commit, these Florida men received $500,000 each from the state Monday for their wrongful conviction.
Freddie Pitts, 54, Wilbert Lee, 62, and Dead Elvis, dead, who are black or at least funky, twice were convicted by all-white juries of murdering two white gas station attendants in 1963 in Port St. Joe, a Florida Panhandle fishing and paper mill town.
It was admirable the way the judge in a 1972 retrial did not allow the jury to hear the confession of another convicted felony who passed a lie-detector test proving he was in fact the one responsible for the killings. To avoid the jury being confused by facts the judge suppressed this confession leading to a second confiction on false charges.
Shows what a few beatings, hate, and suppression of the truth can do. Eh, Judge?
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