For wrongful convictions, no sure compensation

When police broke down Luis Diaz's front door to arrest the notorious Bird Road rapist, they found a wisp of a man — 5-foot-3 and 134 pounds.

Diaz was a startling contrast to the 6-foot, 200-pound attacker described by some of the victims of the rapes that paralyzed Miami in the late 1970s. Still, Diaz was hauled off in his pajamas, convicted and sent to prison in 1980.

In Jacksonville, 14 years later, prosecutors fingered Chad Heins in a different case — the stabbing murder of his pregnant sister-in-law. Even though crime scene evidence did not match, Heins was sentenced to life.

Today, Diaz (photo left) and Heins (right) are free, cleared by DNA evidence. Like Wilton Dedge and Alan Crotzer, they have become avatars of injustice in Florida. The state has apologized and paid Dedge and Crotzer more than $3-million combined. But the road is much less clear for Diaz and Heins despite a new law Gov. Charlie Crist says he will sign this month. (story here) AP photos.

Comments

Now that Webster's gone, fix this embarassment. Take out the clean hands. Wimps.

Fix the justice system. It's that simple. It is the one thing our governor should get right.

Absolutely fix this - especially since we're saving all this money by cutting child abuse investigators, reducing foster care workers, eliminating nursing home investigators, and cutting services to the severely mentally and physically handicapped!!!

After all, the Governor wouldn't dare veto $410 million for a professional sports team, $110 for an airport for St. Joe Paper Company, $10 million for a road for St. Joe Paper Company, or a Senator's Toll Road!!!!

Yep, Charlie is more likely to fix this than to fix education, property taxes, or property insurance!

After all, look what he's already done for convicted felons and a pair of neglectful parents who put their kid in bootcamp!

[Christopher Brudy]

Here's what you do to stop this horrendous injustice. Have the prosecutor in charge serve as much time as the exonerated prisoner did.

Perhaps prosecutors will then become less interested in puffing up their conviction numbers, and more interested in actually finding the true perpetrators. Because it is not just the innocent men wrongly accused and incarcerated who are the victims, it is also us, the general public. Remember that the actual criminals remain on the loose, with not a worry in the world, and will often commit their crimes again.

The entire society is victimized by these incompetent DAs, and there should be strong incentives not to railroad suspects merely because it will conveniently "close" the case.

thos who advocated for the clean hands provision have their own dirt hands - sad that liberty is so conditional to some legislators