State rests in Hoffman-murder trial

After four days of mostly uncontested testimony from 30 witnesses, prosecutors rested their case Thursday afternoon in the murder trial of Deneilo Bradshaw, one of two men accused of killing police informant Rachel Hoffman.

The trial was anticipated to take up to three weeks, but most of the evidence and testimony presented by the state has gone unchallenged by Bradshaw's defense team. The two sides have been collegial and proceedings have been swift.

After a day's break today, Bradshaw's defense team is set to present its case at 9 a.m. Monday. Attorneys plan to call six witnesses, which are anticipated to take about a half-day to testify. Closing arguments are expected to begin Tuesday morning, with jurors to begin deliberations in the afternoon.

If jurors return a guilty verdict, the case will enter a penalty phase. Bradshaw, 24, faces life in prison or death by lethal injection. Jurors would recommend the sentence; the judge is to give it great weight, then make the call.

Bradshaw could be found guilty of first-degree murder if jurors find Hoffman's killing was premeditated or if it was the consequence of a robbery. If he carried out the actual killing or was the principal player, he could face the death penalty.

Limited sequester

Before the state put its final five witnesses on the stand Thursday, Walker ordered jurors to a limited sequester, forbidding them to go to work until they are discharged from the case.

His move came after learning that one of the juror's employer threatened to dock pay because court broke Wednesday at about 2:30 p.m., and the juror did not report to work. Because of the speed of the trial, accommodating witness scheduling has sometimes required long lunches or early breaks.

"It is incomprehensible to me that the employer is punishing them for meeting their civic responsibility," said the incensed judge. "I think it is abhorrent."

Walker threatened to have his "friends in the green" — sheriff's deputies — haul employers who penalize jurors before him in court.

Source: www.tallahassee.com

New DNA evidence might free man convicted in 1974 Polk rape

Thirty-five years ago, a 9-year-old boy was raped in a field near his Lake Wales home. Five months later, a 19-year-old man was convicted of the rape and sent to prison for life.

Now, DNA tests show he was the wrong man.

"Thirty-five years is a lifetime. We hope the state won't prolong James Bain's incarceration," said Seth Miller, executive director of the Innocence Project of Florida.

Of the 245 people in the United States exonerated by DNA evidence since 1989, not one has spent as much time in prison as James Bain.

The State Attorney's Office for the 10th Circuit received the DNA results Wednesday afternoon.

"We're looking at them to determine what to do next," Assistant State Attorney Chip Thullbery said. "We're asking how does this match up with the case. And we'll have to review the case and see. We're also asking do we want to run (the semen) through a different lab."

• • •

On March 4, 1974, the boy was sleeping in a queen-sized bed between his sisters, 10 and 11, when a man crawled through an open window and quietly lifted him out of bed.

The boy didn't wake up when the man carried him out the door and through an orange grove to a baseball diamond in an open field. He didn't wake up till the man laid him in the dust and yelled at him to pull down his pants.

Later, the boy told police the man said he thought he was a girl, because his hair was pin-curled with bobby pins.

"He made me turn over," the boy said.

Within an hour the parents discovered their child missing and called police. Police searched the nearby orange grove and found nothing. The boy staggered home, dazed. He was wearing the white T-shirt and underpants he had worn to bed, his underwear now wet with semen. A medical examination showed a badly torn rectum.

That night, police said the child described the rapist this way: "Bushy sideburns … 17 or 18 … he said his name was Jim."

The boy's uncle, who was at the house, said the description pointed to Jimmy Bain.

Jimmy Bain, 18, who had been a student at the high school where the uncle was assistant principal. Jimmy Bain who had bushy sideburns and rode around town on a motorcycle. Jimmy Bain, whom the boy said he had seen before, though it was hard to describe him because he wore a helmet.

Police went to Bain's home and took his picture. They mixed it in with color Polaroids of four other young men. The boy picked Bain.

Later, in a deposition, the boy described how he identified his attacker to a police officer.

"He asked me can I pick out Jimmie Bains," the boy said. "And I picked him out."

He said it was the same man who took him out to the ball park.

At trial, an FBI analyst testified that the semen on the underpants came from a person with blood group B. Bain's blood group is AB, but the analyst said Bain could not be ruled out as the person who deposited the semen. A defense expert testified that because Bain's blood group was AB with a strong A factor it ruled him out as a suspect.

Bain, who had no previous criminal record, provided an alibi. He and his sister told police they were at home watching TV together at the time the boy disappeared. The jury convicted him anyway.

• • •

In 2001, Bain twice requested DNA testing of the boy's underwear. The requests were rejected. He asked again in 2003 and 2006 and was denied both times. In July of this year, Bain requested DNA testing again. This time a Polk County judge granted the motion.

From the DNA Diagnostics Center report dated Dec. 9:

"The partial DNA profile obtained from item 01.C.1s (section from underwear sperm fraction) is not consistent with the DNA profile from James Bain."

Innocence Project attorney Melissa Montle called Bain, 54, at Okeechobee Correctional Institution to tell him the news.

"I always knew I was innocent," Bain was quoted saying. "I've been waiting well over half my life for this miracle. I hope to be back with my family real soon."

Attorneys for the Innocence Project said they expect to file a motion soon to have Bain's conviction vacated and asking that he be released.

The victim, who is now 45 and lives in Central Florida, refused to talk to the St. Petersburg Times. But his father (who asked not to be identified to protect his son) said that his son "is very upset by the news."

Because he still believes Bain raped him, or because it appears the wrong man was convicted?

"Now, we can't be sure," said the father.

The victim was in the Marine Corps for over five years in his 20s. His father described him as "disciplined and upstanding until he fell apart."

Florida Department of Corrections records show that by his mid 30s the victim was going in and out of prison for cocaine possession and theft.

"Once, on the way to rehab, he told me he couldn't shake the rape," said the father.

In August 2006, prison records show that the victim and Bain were at the same prison. The victim requested and got a transfer.

Now, the father says: "We don't know what to think, and we have nothing more to say. This whole thing is a tragedy all the way around."

Source: www.tampabay.com

DNA evidence could free man in prison for 35 years

James Bain's mother, 77 years old Sarah Reed, speaks to the media at an afternoon press conference.

He was sentenced to life in prison in the rape of a Lake Wales boy, but James Bain always said he was innocent.

Now, 35 years later, new DNA evidence backs up the inmate's claim.

The results show that Bain's DNA does not match any samples on the victim's underwear, according to a report released Wednesday by the Ohio-based DNA Diagnostics Center.

"I always knew I was innocent," Bain, now 54, said in a news release. "I've been waiting well over half my life for this miracle. I hope to be back with my family real soon."

Attorneys for Bain, and the Innocence Project of Florida which took on the case, say they are working to free Bain from the Okeechobee Correctional Institution and reunite him with his family by Christmas.

A motion for a post-conviction release will be filed within the next couple of days, Bain's attorney, Bob Young, said.

The Innocence Project screens and investigates cases with strong evidence – typically biological evidence – that a person has been wrongly imprisoned, executive director Seth Miller said.

Bain was 19 years old when he was convicted of rape, kidnapping and breaking and entering.

"Thirty-five years of his life is gone and we'll never get that back," his sister, Jacqueline Bain, said at a news conference in Bartow this afternoon. "But we're here for him. He's going to be alright."

Polk County State Attorney's Office spokesman Chip Thullbery said his agency has received the DNA test results and is reviewing the facts of the case.

"We simply want to do the right thing," Thullbery said. "We're not going to rush to judgment."

Prosecutors may ask a different lab to run another test, he said.

Court records show that the victim, then 9, remembers falling asleep on a bed with his siblings on the night of March 4, 1974. The boy said he didn't recall being taken out of his mother's Lake Wales home but awoke to see a man dragging him by the arm.

The man took him past a baseball diamond and stopped on a dirt road, the boy said. The man slapped him, forced him to the ground and raped him.

The man ran off and the boy wandered back to his house wearing only a T-shirt and jockey underwear.

The boy said his attacker had bushy sideburns and a mustache. The victim's uncle, a former assistant principal, said the description sounded like Bain, whom the uncle knew when Bain was a student at the local high school, court records show.

Detectives showed the boy photographs of possible suspects, including Bain. Detectives did not ask the victim to identify the attacker and instead asked him if "I can pick out Jimmy Bain," the boy said in his deposition.

Court records show that police denied asking that question and said they simply showed the victim five photographs and that the boy pointed to Bain's.

Police went to Bain's home that night and arrested him. His sister Jannie Bain testified that she and her brother were watching television during the time the boy was raped.

At the trial, the jury heard conflicting testimony about blood samples taken into evidence and rejected Bain's alibi in favor of the boy's eyewitness identification, Young said.

Bain has filed motions for DNA testing since 2001 but was denied each time. The Polk state attorney's office agreed to the testing in October.

The key piece of evidence—the boy's underwear—had been stored for more than three decades at the Polk County Clerk of the Circuit Court yet the DNA samples had not degraded, Young said.

Since 2003, the Innocence Project has helped exonerate 245 inmates nationwide through DNA evidence. Out of that number, Bain has served his sentence the longest, Miller said.

Source(www2.tbo.com)

Death penalty still on the table in trial of suspect in Hoffman case

Deneilo Bradshaw sits stoically during the fourth day of his murder trial on Thursday. Prosecuting attorneys called their last witnesses in Day 4 of the Hoffman murder case on Thursday, December 10, 2009. One of the witness, FDLE investigator J. Cesar Saldanha, told the jury that Bradshaw led investigators to the body of Rachel Hoffman back in May of 2008.

Deneilo Bradshaw faces the death penalty if found guilty of killing police informant Rachel Hoffman, despite an appeal by his defense team Friday to remove the punishment as an option.

Defense attorney Greg Cummings argued before Circuit Judge Mark Walker that the death penalty would be inappropriate in Bradshaw's case because the 24-year-old did not pull the trigger on the gun that shot Hoffman five times nor did he intend to kill her.

But Walker sided with Assistant State Attorney Eddie Evans, who said evidence presented during this week's trial showed that Bradshaw and his brother-in-law Andrea Green were equally culpable for Hoffman's death. Green is being tried separately in October for her murder.

Bradshaw, not Green, was working at the car tinting and detailing shop the day the gun used to kill Hoffman was stolen, Evans said. It was Bradshaw who talked to the 23-year-old that day about her purchasing a gun. In addition, Evans said, Bradshaw was in Hoffman's vehicle before and after she was killed and had some of the money police gave Hoffman to buy drugs and a gun from the men in the botched drug sting operation that led to her death.

"At this point," said Walker, citing U.S. Supreme Court precedent, "there is supporting evidence that there was major participation (by Bradshaw) and there was reckless indifference."

Without elaboration, Walker also denied a defense motion for acquittal. Defense attorney Clyde Taylor argued that Bradshaw did not go to Gardner Road to rob Hoffman — an offense that triggers a felony murder charge — but simply to sell her drugs and gun.

"You have absolutely nothing that shows a state of mind intent to rob Hoffman or that this defendant knew a crime, i.e, a homicide, was to occur on May 7, (2008)," Taylor said.

Evans countered that the behavior of the men after Hoffman was killed showed they intended to rob her. He pointed to the fact that while Hoffman was to buy 2 ounces of cocaine and 1,500 Ecstasy pills from the men, they didn't bring the drugs.

"When you look at someone's subsequent actions, you can see their intent," Evans said.

Bradshaw's murder trial resumes Monday with his defense team putting on its case. Jurors are expected to begin deliberating on Tuesday.

Source: www.tallahassee.com

Jury deadlocks in tattooed neo-Nazi's murder trial

NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. -- A Florida judge has declared a mistrial in the murder trial of a neo-Nazi whose tattoos were covered up for the courtroom by a state cosmetologist.

After deliberating for 10 hours Friday, jurors told Circuit Judge Michael Andrews they were deadlocked. Ten jurors believed John Allen Ditullio was not guilty, while two believed he was the masked man who fatally stabbed one person and injured another in a mobile home in 2006.

Prosecutors had sought the death penalty. They are expected to retry Ditullio on charges of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder.

Ditullio has a large swastika, barbed wire and a vulgarity tattooed on his face and neck. Acting on a request by Ditullio's lawyer, Andrews ruled that the tattoos could sway a jury's opinion and ordered them covered.

Source(www.miamiherald.com)

Petition calls for creation of Florida innocence review board

The Florida high court has been asked to launch an investigation into why several people have been wrongfully convicted in the state.

TALLAHASSEE -- Former Florida State University president Talbot ``Sandy'' D'Alemberte filed a petition with the state Supreme Court on Friday asking for a commission to investigate wrongful convictions.

``I think it's just strange to see all the recent exonerations and not try to learn something about the mistakes we've been making,'' said D'Alemberte, who also is a former state lawmaker and former president of the American Bar Association.

The 18-page petition, signed by nearly 70 lawyers including some former state Supreme Court justices, calls for creating the Florida Actual Innocence Commission modeled off a system in North Carolina by the same name.

Such an idea is not new, but D'Alemberte cites the recent cases of Alan Crotzer, Wilton Dedge and nine others who were exonerated after being imprisoned. It also came a day after the Florida Innocence Project announced it has new evidence to clear a Polk County man, James Bain.

D'Alemberte, a prominent Tallahassee attorney, had harsh words for the Florida Bar Association, who he feels needs to do more to police the lawyers involved in these cases.

``I am shocked the Bar hasn't opened ethical inquiries into these recent cases,'' he said. ``I'm surprised they haven't shown more interest in the way the criminal justice system works.''

Rules allow a group of 50 or more attorneys to petition the court for a rule-making procedure and D'Alemberte said this commission would mirror similar ones that looked at the issues of racial and gender bias in the court system.

At least eight other states have innocence commissions.

The one in North Carolina makes recommendations for addressing issues like mistaken witness identifications and false confessions to decrease the possibility of convicting innocent people.

D'Alemberte acknowledges that funding such an entity is a likely roadblock, given the recent budget cuts to the court system.

Source www.miamiherald.com

Testimony to begin in Hoffman murder trial

By Jennifer Portman
Democrat Senior Writer

Nineteen months to the day that Rachel Morningstar Hoffman was shot to death on a dead-end Leon County road, one of two men accused of killing her will stand trial.

Testimony begins Mionday in the capital murder case against Deneilo Bradshaw.

Police say Bradshaw and his step brother-in-law Andrea Green agreed to sell Hoffman, a 23-year-old first-time confidential informant for the Tallahassee Police Department, cocaine, Ecstasy and a stolen, sticky-triggered handgun in a failed drug sting operation that ended in her death.

Thirty-six hours after 19 law enforcement officers lost contact with Hoffman when she disobeyed orders and followed the men to Gardner Road with an ultimately useless wire and $13,000 stuck in her purse, police say Bradshaw and Green led them to her body dumped in the woods outside Perry.

Courtroom 3-G at the Leon County Courthouse is expected to be packed with spectators Monday, including Hoffman’s mother and father and family members of Bradshaw, 24, who grew up in the Virgin Islands, moved to Tallahassee in 2004 and lived in tony Summerbrooke, not far from where Hoffman was killed.

“I have to come to the trial,” said her mother Margie Weiss. “As painful as I expect the evidence to be, I am her mother.”

Bradshaw’s family watched jury selection last week, and will be there again this week.

“We are confident that God’s will is going to be done in this trial, and we are confident that justice will be served, ” said Bradshaw’s stepfather Karey Freeman.

“The battle is not ours, it is God’s and we stand in the power of his might.”
Bradshaw’s parents said if possible, they will greet the Hoffmans.

“Our son is a sweet young man that has a heart for God now,” Freeman said of Bradshaw, who has two young daughters. “We have a lot of compassion for the position that (the Hoffmans) are in.”

Circuit Judge Mark Walker will preside over the trial, which is expected to last two to three weeks. It is the 41-year-old judge’s first capital murder trial. Green, 27, of Perry, is to stand trial separately before the judge in October.

Bradshaw is being represented by a team of three defense attorneys led by Chuck Hobbs, who in late October demanded a speedy trial for their client.

Hobbs, also working on his first death-penalty case, is perhaps best know for representing some members of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity two years ago in a high-profile hazing case. He is being assisted by Clyde Taylor and Greg Cummings, both seasoned defense attorney with extensive experience representing defendants in capital cases.

Veteran Assistant State Attorney Frank Allman will be presenting the case for State Attorney Willie Meggs. Allman will be assisted by Meggs’ Chief Assistant State Attorney, Georgia Cappleman and longtime Assistant State Attorney Eddie Evans.

So far, interactions between the legal teams have been mostly affable. Juror interviews were punctuated with lighthearted exchanges. Despite concerns about the impact of pretrial publicity, the attorneys were able to agree without rancor on a panel of 15 – a dozen jurors and three alternates - in three days.

The jury of seven women and five men includes a state department attorney, an apartment manager, a recent FSU history graduate and a paramedic. The jurors include one black woman and one black man.

Attorneys on both sides have agreed to not discuss details of the case outside of what they present in court. Late last week, the lawyers conceded to discuss procedural matters with the news media, but nothing more. Much of the pretrial evidence that typically would be released has been under seal to help ensure that an unbiased jury could be seated in the county.

Beginning today, details about what happened to the free-spirited copper-haired girl who got in trouble for selling pot and agreed to help police to work off her charges, will finally begin to be revealed to the public.

Her parents, who are suing the city for the wrongful death of their only daughter, plan to come from their homes near Tampa and stay for the duration of the trial.

They will hear it all.

“I can’t change things,” said Irv Hoffman, who along with Weiss fought for passage this year of Rachel’s Law, the nation’s first law designed to protect confidential informants. “I just want to be the face and voice of Rachel.”