Carl Dausch, a for­mer death row inmate in Florida, has been added to DPIC’s list of exon­er­a­tions from death row, bring­ing the nation­al total to 147 and Florida’s total to 25, the most of any state in the coun­try. On June 12, 2014, the Florida Supreme Court direct­ed the acquit­tal of Dausch because there was insuf­fi­cient evi­dence of his guilt. The Court stat­ed, ​“We do not take light­ly the result that will flow from our deci­sion today. We have reviewed the entire record in this case with the utmost seri­ous­ness and care. Yet, our com­pre­hen­sive review of this case leaves us with the inescapable con­clu­sion that the evi­dence is sim­ply insuf­fi­cient to con­clude, beyond a rea­son­able doubt, that Dausch was the per­son respon­si­ble for mur­der­ing Mobley. At best, the evi­dence pre­sent­ed by the State cre­ates a sus­pi­cion of guilt.” Dausch’s is the fourth death penal­ty exon­er­a­tion in 2014. Glenn Ford was exon­er­at­ed in Louisiana in March, and Henry McCollum and Leon Brown were exon­er­at­ed in North Carolina in September. All three men had been impris­oned for 30 years.

Dausch is serv­ing a 60-year sen­tence in Indiana for an unre­lat­ed con­vic­tion. Although he was added to DPIC’s list after Brown and McCollum, his exon­er­a­tion occurred before theirs, and he is list­ed as #145, with McCollum and Brown being #146 and #147, respectively.

(See Dausch v. Florida, No. SC12-1161 (June 12, 2014); post­ed by DPIC, October 30, 2014). See Innocence; lis­ten to DPIC’s pod­cast on Innocence.

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