In The News

Bush reinstates Oldsmar City Council member
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An identifiable flaw
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Not one fingerprint, no hair, no conviction
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Figure in insurance scam avoids prison
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Fraud trial ends with guilty plea
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An identifiable flaw

Misidentification may have cost two innocent men months of freedom.

Attorney Frank McDermott and his client Ricardo Thomas.

[Times photo: Michael Rondou]
Ricardo Thomas, 5-foot-10, 170 pounds, spent 19 months in jail after a witness identified him as a carjacking suspect. But a bank robbery suspect later confessed to the crime and told Thomas' lawyer Frank McDermott, left, that Thomas is innocent.

By WILLIAM R. LEVESQUE, Times Staff Writer, © St. Petersburg Times, published April 24, 2002
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LARGO -- The eyewitness never wavered in his identification of two suspects involved in a St. Petersburg carjacking last year.

"I'm in fear of my life over this and believe me, I'm going to remember something that's making me fear for my life," the witness told lawyers.

Based primarily on the witness' identification, both suspects were arrested and charged with carjacking. They faced life in prison and spent more than a year in jail awaiting trial.

Then earlier this year, the witness' memory came suddenly into question.

An accused Polk County bank robber confessed to the carjacking and said the two men charged with the crime were innocent.

Now attorneys for the two suspects, Ricardo J. Thomas and Dangelo Q. Hutchinson, both 22, say their clients are the victims of the witness' faulty memory. And prosecutors are considering dropping charges, though they stop short of saying the suspects were wrongfully accused.

Upon hearing of the confession, a Pinellas circuit judge released Thomas on his own recognizance Friday after 19 months in jail. Hutchinson was already free, spending 15 months in jail before his release on $20,000 bail in February.

"Eyewitness testimony is the least-reliable out there," said attorney Frank McDermott, who represents Thomas. "But it's the most trusted. Jurors feel comfortable convicting someone based on eyewitness testimony. But they shouldn't."

It's the latest Pinellas case to cast the spotlight on the reliability of eyewitness identification.

Pinellas sheriff's deputies misidentified a woman in 2000 and charged her with selling crack cocaine. She spent 81 days in jail before deputies uncovered their mistake.

Another spent several hours in jail in 1999. He then spent a year clearing his name before prosecutors dropped a drug charge against him based on a misidentification by Pinellas deputies.

Contez Caldwell, 25, was visiting an auto repair shop late in the evening of Sept. 11, 2000, when a white car came toward him.

Four men approached, demanding the keys to the car he was driving. One of the men shot him in the back, a wound that was not life-threatening. The shooter made off with his keys.

Caldwell told police the faces of three of these men were covered and he could not get a good look at them. He saw one face but was later unable to identify the man.

But police found a witness: David Hayslip, owner of the auto shop that Caldwell was visiting at the time of the shooting. He said he saw some of the assailants' faces.

Hayslip said the day after the carjacking, four men driving a white car visited him at his shop on Dr. M.L. King (Ninth) Street S. He said he recognized the carjackers among them.

The four men, Hayslip told police, feared he had identified them to police, and they threatened him. They told him he had the wrong men.

After the four men visited Hayslip, police showed him a series of mugshots: He identified Thomas and Hutchinson as the carjackers and the men who visited him.

"I'm sure that there aren't too many people that got the same looking face," Hayslip told lawyers.

When police picked up Thomas, he admitted he and three buddies -- not including his friend, Hutchinson -- confronted Hayslip after hearing rumors in the neighborhood that Hayslip had identified him.

Hayslip hadn't.

"My client shouldn't have confronted Hayslip," said McDermott. "By doing that, he planted his face in Hayslip's mind, so when police showed (Hayslip) the mugshots, he identified Thomas."

It didn't help that both Thomas and Hutchinson had minor criminal records. Among several of Hutchinson's convictions was a charge for possession of cocaine, while Thomas had a record of misdemeanors, mostly for trespassing.

But the case against the men was about the take a dramatic turn.

Last year, federal authorities executed a search warrant at the home of Yves Mathieu, 21, of Lakeland, as part of an unrelated investigation of a bank robbery.

Authorities found the rims and stereo from the St. Petersburg carjacking. Much earlier, they had found the burned out car within miles of Mathieu's home.

At first, Mathieu denied involvement in the carjacking, saying he bought the stolen items from someone else. Then at a deposition earlier this year, he told McDermott to visit him in the jail. Mathieu wanted to get something off his mind.

On April 11, he confessed to McDermott that he and several friends carried out the carjacking. He said the friends were Jonathan Gaines, Alexander Contreras and Jason Ashby. The men, who deny they committed the carjacking, already were in jail on other charges.

Mathieu said he knew neither Thomas nor Hutchinson. He said they were innocent.

Mathieu later repeated the confession to a St. Petersburg detective.

"It kind of complicates things when someone else steps forward and confesses to a crime you have charged someone else with committing," said Carl Watts, a St. Petersburg officer who investigated the case.

"It definitely makes it a case that's hard to prosecute at this point," he said.

Pinellas prosecutor Kendall Davidson said no decision has been made on dropping charges against Thomas and Hutchinson, though he acknowledged the case would be difficult to prove now.

Thomas is just happy to be free again.

"It's crazy," he said. "It's been rough because I knew all along I was in for something I didn't do."

By WILLIAM R. LEVESQUE

Bush reinstates Oldsmar City Council member
------------
An identifiable flaw
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Not one fingerprint, no hair, no conviction
------------
Figure in insurance scam avoids prison
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Fraud trial ends with guilty plea
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Not one fingerprint, no hair, no conviction

You have to have something to tie him to that room,'' said a juror in the case of a raped tourist.

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 13, 2001
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LARGO -- Rodney L. Corbitt looked on nervously as the six jurors filed out of the courtroom late Thursday to begin deliberating his fate.

Accused of raping a tourist in a Largo hotel, he faced life in prison.

Prosecutors were confident. Detectives said Corbitt confessed. His ex-girlfriend testified that he admitted raping the woman. The victim identified him in court. He was in the neighborhood the night of the attack.

Even some of the jurors who were filing out of the room thought he was probably guilty.

About 2 a.m. Friday, four hours after deliberations began, jurors returned and announced that Corbitt was not guilty of rape, burglary and robbery.

Corbitt, 31, of Palm Harbor cried as he hugged his defense attorney, Frank McDermott, a young lawyer trying just his third or fourth felony trial alone. Corbitt told him softly, "I owe you my life."

Said McDermott, "When detectives come into the court and testify that your client confessed to them, that's a tough mountain to climb."

Gerald Dye, an alternate juror who did not participate in deliberations, waited for the verdict and said he was disgusted by the result. "It's a travesty," Dye said. "It makes no sense. I had him guilty on all three counts. It was almost an embarrassment that I sat on that jury."

How McDermott and his client overcame a confession may underscore the importance of physical evidence in a juror's mind. Despite a confession and a victim who identified Corbitt, Pinellas sheriff's deputies never were able to collect a fingerprint, a shred of hair or a stain of semen linking him to the attack on Dec. 29, 1998.

"You have to have something to tie him to that room," said juror Russell Lawson. "We all felt deep down that he was the one. We sure did. If they could have come up with anything to put him in that room, he would have been guilty in a heartbeat."

Corbitt has been jailed since August 1999. He remains at the Pinellas County Jail awaiting another trial on unrelated grand theft and burglary charges and could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Missouri woman who was raped at the La Quinta Inn on Ulmerton Road also could not be reached. Her identity is being withheld because of the nature of the charges.

"I'm disappointed that the jury did not feel confident with the victim's gut-wrenching, compelling testimony," said Pinellas prosecutor Brian Daniels.

The 42-year-old woman and her husband were staying at the hotel while they visited Florida to see relatives.

Her husband was away from the room when someone knocked on her door. When she opened the door a crack, a man brandishing a knife forced his way in. He demanded jewelry and cash and then raped her.

Later, police identified Corbitt as a suspect. He was in the neighborhood drinking the night of the rape. Two detectives testified that when questioned, he admitted raping the woman, though he claimed he was paid to do so by the woman's husband.

Deputies believed he raped her but didn't buy the part about the husband.

Corbitt's ex-girlfriend, Tanya Sue Freeman, testified in court that Corbitt told her he raped the woman.

Corbitt's attorney, McDermott, pointed jurors to an alternative suspect who, he said, deputies didn't fully investigate.

A worker at the hotel testified that a guest made outlandishly lewd comments to her not long before the rape and at one point tried to kiss her.

Deputies interviewed the man after the rape was reported and thought he acted nervously. But his description didn't match the one the victim gave police, so he wasn't pursued as a suspect.

Her attacker was much older, taller and heavier, the victim told police.

"The police need to follow all leads," said McDermott. "The victim deserves it, but so does my client."

Jurors didn't look to the alternate suspect proposed by McDermott in acquitting Corbitt, said juror Lawson.

He said jurors were bothered by many things, most particularly the lack of physical evidence. But they were also uncomfortable that deputies didn't tape-record the confession. Deputies said Corbitt refused to be taped.

"I feel sorry for the lady," Lawson said. "Somebody raped her."

By WILLIAM R. LEVESQUE