On December 21, Seth Penalver was acquit­ted of all charges and will be freed from Florida​’s death row, 13 years after being sen­tenced to death. He was orig­i­nal­ly charged with a triple mur­der and armed rob­bery that occurred in Broward County in 1994. His first tri­al end­ed with a dead­locked jury. At his sec­ond tri­al in 1999, he was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death. In 2006, the Florida Supreme Court (Penalver v. Florida, No. SC00-1602, Feb. 2, 2006) over­turned his con­vic­tion because the pros­e­cu­tion had intro­duced improp­er evi­dence at his tri­al. A co-defen­dant, Pablo Ibar, was also sen­tenced to death and remains on death row. A video from the crime scene helped con­vict Ibar, but images show­ing anoth­er sus­pect were incon­clu­sive. Penalver has always main­tained his inno­cence. At Penalver’s most recent tri­al, which began 5 months ago, the jury was dead­locked 10 – 2, and both the pros­e­cu­tion and defense agreed to replace two jurors with alter­nates who had attend­ed the pro­ceed­ings. The new­ly con­sti­tut­ed jury began delib­er­a­tions afresh and found Penalver not guilty of all charges. Penalver is the 142nd per­son to be exon­er­at­ed and freed from death row since 1973, and the 24th such per­son in Florida, the most of any state.

(R. Olmeda, ​“Jury finds Penalver not guilty in Casey’s Nickelodeon triple mur­der case,” Sun Sentinel, Dec. 21, 2012). Florida led the coun­try in death sen­tences in 2012 with 21. One oth­er per­son, Damon Thibodeaux in Louisiana, was exon­er­at­ed in 2012. See Innocence and DPIC’s 2012 Year End Report. See also Press Release, Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, Dec. 21, 2012.

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