TAMPA, Fla. -- Imagine being wrongly convicted of a crime and sent to death row.
For three people who spoke Friday in Hillsborough County, that nightmare was a reality. And now, their cases could help to form a new review panel aimed at making sure past prosecutorial errors are corrected.
For years, Sabrina Smith, Ray Krone and Randy Steidl sat in prison. Counting down the days to their execution for crimes they didn’t commit.
The pitfalls of wrongful prosecution were the focus of a workshop for local prosecutors and law enforcement, hosted by the Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren’s office and a group which endorses life in prison rather than the death penalty - called Witness to Innocence.
“No physical evidence, no forensic evidence tied me to the crime and I had a corroborated alibi,” said Steidl. “And I went from the comforts of my home to death row in 97 days.”
In Steidl’s case, allegedly corrupt law enforcement officials used the testimony of a town drunk to silence him.
“Can you imagine sitting in a tiny box like that, knowing your death date. And nothing you can do about it?” said Smith, sent to death row at the age of 19, wrongly convicted of killing her son.
In Krone’s case, he was convicted of murder a woman. Prosecutors used outdated bite-mark technology. DNA evidence ultimately cleared Krone and helped locate the real killer.
“The judge sentenced me to death. At the time, I was supposed to show remorse,” said Krone. “How do you show remorse for something you didn’t do? How do you apologize for an act you never committed?”
“At least you don’t risk the possibility of executing an innocent person,” said Steidl.
The goal was to identify common threads in cases where innocent people have been punished.
Examples, said Warren, include, “Cooperator testimony. Changed witness testimony. Prosecutorial misconduct, which unfortunately happens sometimes in the system.”
Warren says it’s another reason he would like to create a Conviction Integrity Unit in his office. Fact-based reviews of past cases to make sure people haven’t been wrongly prosecuted.
Hearing these personal, real cases, Warren hoped, would give local law enforcement officials and prosecutors a perspective to consider as they do their jobs.
“We’re not infallible,” said Warren. “And so, we make mistakes and it’s important to study those mistakes to do our jobs better.”
Warren says he intends to form a Conviction Integrity Unit in his office sometime this year with one prosecutor, one investigator and one staff member at a cost of around $300,000 a year.
Warren said Duval County had been awarded funds by the state Legislature when they formed a similar unit, but that Hillsborough’s request was denied.
“There’s over 160 of us that are documented that spent time on death row,” said Steidl. “We are the lucky ones. We don’t know how many were not as fortunate as us.”
Smith agreed.
“I want what happened to me not to happen to anyone else,” she said. “And I want them to change the justice system. It needs an overhaul.”
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