With new­ly dis­cov­ered con­fes­sions and DNA evi­dence point­ing to the prosecution’s chief wit­ness as the actu­al killer, pros­e­cu­tors dropped all charges against Clemente Javier Aguirre (pic­tured, cen­ter, at his exon­er­a­tion) in a Seminole County, Florida court­room on November 5, 2018. The dis­missal of the charges made Aguirre the 164th wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed death-row pris­on­er to be exon­er­at­ed in the United States since 1973 and the 28th in Florida. The announce­ment that pros­e­cu­tors were drop­ping all charges against Aguirre came after jury selec­tion for his retri­al had already begun. The Florida Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly over­turned his con­vic­tion in 2016. ​“Mr. Aguirre was near­ly exe­cut­ed for a crime he didn’t com­mit,” said Joshua Dubin, one of Aguirre’s attor­neys. ​“While we are over­joyed that his ordeal is final­ly over, the case of Clemente Aguirre should serve as a chill­ing cau­tion­ary tale about how dan­ger­ous it is when there is a rush to judg­ment in a capital case.”

Aguirre was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 2006 for the mur­der of two neigh­bors: an elder­ly woman and her adult daugh­ter. He stead­fast­ly main­tained his inno­cence, say­ing he had dis­cov­ered the women only after they had been killed. He did not report the mur­ders to author­i­ties, he said, because he was an undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant and feared depor­ta­tion. Evidence has increas­ing­ly point­ed to the vic­tims’ daugh­ter and grand­daugh­ter, Samantha Williams, as the like­ly per­pe­tra­tor, and an affi­davit filed last week under­mined Williams’s ali­bi. DNA test­ing had revealed Williams’s blood in sev­er­al loca­tions at the crime scene but had found none of Aguirre’s blood. Williams also has report­ed­ly con­fessed to the crime on at least five occa­sions. A sworn affi­davit from the wife of Mark Van Sandt, Williams’s boyfriend at the time of the crime and her key ali­bi wit­ness, says that Van Sandt told his wife he saw Williams crawl­ing out of his bed­room win­dow on the night of the mur­ders. Prosecutors said that they dropped charges ​“based upon new evi­dence that mate­ri­al­ly affects the cred­i­bil­i­ty of a crit­i­cal State witness.”

Aguirre is an undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant from Honduras, and his attor­neys say they plan to file an asy­lum appli­ca­tion on his behalf. Joshua Dubin said in a state­ment: ​“If there were ever a per­son that deserved a chance to become a United States cit­i­zen, it is Clemente Aguirre. He has been ful­ly exon­er­at­ed, so we are going to be ask­ing the immi­gra­tion judge to set a bond and allow Clemente to be released while his appli­ca­tion for asy­lum pro­ceeds.” Aguirre is the third for­eign nation­al to be exon­er­at­ed in the last year. Gabriel Solache was exon­er­at­ed in Illinois on December 21, 2017 and Vicente Benavides was released on April 19, 2018 after near­ly 26 years on California’s death row. Both Solache and Benavides are Mexican nation­als. While there has been one exon­er­a­tion for about every nine exe­cu­tions in the U.S. over­all, there has been one exon­er­a­tion of a for­eign nation­al for every 6.17 exe­cu­tions of a for­eign nation­al, sug­gest­ing that for­eign nation­als may be more like­ly to face wrong­ful con­vic­tions and death sen­tences than U.S. citizens.

Aguirre was sen­tenced to death by the tri­al judge despite non-unan­i­mous 7 – 5 and 9 – 3 jury votes for death in the two mur­ders. 20 of the 22 Florida exon­er­a­tions for which researchers have been able to deter­mine the jury vote have involved judges impos­ing the death penal­ty despite a jury rec­om­men­da­tion for life or after a non-unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tion for death. Florida now requires a unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tion before a judge can impose a death sen­tence. Florida has had more death-row exon­er­a­tions than any other state.

(Innocent Man Who Spent Over a Decade on Florida’s Death Row is Exonerated, Innocence Project, November 5, 2018; Michael Williams, Prosecutors drop case against exon­er­at­ed death-row inmate Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin, Orlando Sentinel, November 5, 2018; Photo Courtesy of the Innocence Project.) See Innocence and Foreign Nationals.

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