Mother: Steele didn't do it

DADE CITY -- His easy going manner. His absent father. His love of those of every color. The death of his stepfather. His helpfulness, his friendliess, his good nature. The deaths of good friends during that tragic summer of 2003.

The defense has shared all this with the jury in the Alfredie Steele Jr. sentencing.

Steele's lawyers are trying to convince the jury to spare his life, to not recommend the death sentence for the man convicted of killing Pasco sheriff's Lt. Charles "Bo" Harrison.

But there is one element missing from the defense's game plan to save Steele's life: contrition.

Regina Clemmons, the mother who tried to humanize her son to the jury, had just one more thing to say at the end of her testimony Friday:

"I want to go on the record saying I don't believe my son did this," she said.

Assistant Public Defender Bob Focht tried to stop her from blurting that out in front of the jury.

The jury wasn't in the courtroom earlier Friday when her son said the same thing a day after he was convicted of first-degree murder: he didn't do it, and his lawyers should have told the jury that.

"The fact there is no evidence against me in this case," he told the court. "It wasn't stressed. It wasn't put there, and therefore the jury never really had the chance to even get that in their brain, to even consider that there."

No evidence, except the many recorded confessions Steele made that were played for the jury this week.

-- JAMAL THALJI