Exonerees in Florida, Idaho Murder Cases Initiate Lawsuits for Wrongful Prosecution

In two cas­es in which the death penal­ty played a cen­tral role, recent exonerees in Florida and Idaho have ini­ti­at­ed legal pro­ceed­ings against gov­ern­ment offi­cials, alleg­ing that they were wrong­ful­ly pros­e­cut­ed and convicted.

On January 7, 2020, Florida death-row exoneree Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin (pic­tured with his lawyers), filed suit in fed­er­al court against Seminole County, the coun­ty sheriff’s office, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) alleg­ing that he had been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the 2004 mur­ders of two neigh­bors as a result of a neg­li­gent inves­ti­ga­tion fueled by anti-immi­grant bias. In December 2019, Idaho Falls offi­cials con­firmed that Christopher Tapp, whom police coerced into false­ly con­fess­ing to a 1996 rape and mur­der by threat­en­ing him with the death penal­ty, has served notice of his intent to sue the city for a wide range of civ­il rights abus­es aris­ing out of his arrest and wrongful conviction.

Aguirre was exon­er­at­ed in November 2018 after near­ly 15 years of wrong­ful impris­on­ment. When DNA test­ing cleared Tapp of the rape charges in 2017 after more than 20 years in prison, pros­e­cu­tors con­di­tioned his release upon accept­ing a plea deal that left his mur­der con­vic­tion intact. He was exon­er­at­ed in July 2019 when the actu­al mur­der­er, who had been iden­ti­fied by the DNA test­ing, con­fessed to hav­ing acted alone.

Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin

Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin, an undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant from Honduras, dis­cov­ered the bod­ies of his next-door neigh­bors Cheryl Williams and Cheryl Williams and her moth­er Carol Bareis on the day of mur­der. Williams had been stabbed 129 times, sug­gest­ing the killer had been in an emo­tion­al rage. Fearing depor­ta­tion, Aguirre did not report the mur­ders to the police. Despite the fact that Williams had had a loud argu­ment with her vio­lent­ly men­tal­ly ill daugh­ter, Samantha, the night before, police con­cen­trat­ed their inves­ti­ga­tion on Aguirre, whom ali­bi wit­ness­es said had been play­ing pool with them at the time of the murders.

Although DNA test­ing was avail­able at the time, police did not con­duct test­ing and Aguirre’s tri­al lawyer did not request it. When DNA test­ing was con­duct­ed dur­ing Aguirre’s post-con­vic­tion pro­ceed­ings, blood sam­ples tak­en from each of the rooms in which they had been col­lect­ed matched Samantha Williams and the vic­tims. None of the sam­ples matched Aguirre.

Prosecutors pre­sent­ed Samantha Williams as a key wit­ness against Aguirre in his trial.

Aguirre’s law­suit alleges that ​“Clemente’s night­mare was the direct result of the fail­ure of the Seminole County Sheriff’s office to con­duct a con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly ade­quate inves­ti­ga­tion, free of eth­nic stereo­types and false assump­tions, into the … mur­ders.” It charges that inves­ti­ga­tors ignored evi­dence that impli­cat­ed Samantha Williams in the mur­ders and, ​“moti­vat­ed con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly by their bias against undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants from coun­tries in Central America, focused instead on Clemente.” It fur­ther charges that FDLE crime scene ana­lysts inex­plic­a­bly failed to test the blood found at the scene and that law enforce­ment with­held from the defense excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence and evi­dence that would have under­mined the cred­i­bil­i­ty of prosecution witnesses.

“Clemente Aguirre’s incar­cer­a­tion should have nev­er occurred,” the law­suit alleges. ​“Were it not for the fla­grant mis­con­duct of the defen­dants, it nev­er would have happened.”

Christopher Tapp

Christopher Tapp was arrest­ed in 1997 on charges that he had raped and mur­dered 18-year-old Angie Dodge. An Idaho Falls jury con­vict­ed him on both charges in 1998 based upon a con­fes­sion Tapp said had been coerced and the tes­ti­mo­ny of a wit­ness who claimed she had over­heard Tapp and a sec­ond man talk­ing about stabbing Dodge. 

Idaho Falls police inter­ro­gat­ed Tapp, who was then 20 years old, nine times about the killing and admin­is­tered sev­en poly­graph tests. Years lat­er, the Idaho Innocence Project and the advo­ca­cy group Judges for Justice reviewed video­taped record­ings of Tapp’s inter­ro­ga­tions. According to news reports, the record­ings doc­u­ment­ed that police had told Tapp he faced the death penal­ty if he didn’t con­fess, lied to him that he had failed the poly­graph tests, sug­gest­ed he had repressed mem­o­ries of the killing, and offered him lenien­cy — includ­ing pos­si­ble immu­ni­ty — for impli­cat­ing oth­ers. The tapes also showed that police had fed Tapp details of the mur­der and then lied when they claimed that Tapp had pro­vid­ed the details on his own.

Tapp sub­se­quent­ly con­fessed and, at police urg­ing, named oth­ers who sup­pos­ed­ly were involved in the crime. After DNA evi­dence did not match Tapp or any of the indi­vid­u­als whose names he had pro­vid­ed dur­ing the coer­cive inter­ro­ga­tions, pros­e­cu­tors accused him of lying, with­drew the plea deal for his coop­er­a­tion, and played his record­ed false con­fes­sion to the jury. He was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to a term of 30 years to life. 

Following post-con­vic­tion rev­e­la­tions that Tapp’s con­fes­sion had been coerced, Dodge’s moth­er joined efforts to secure Tapp’s free­dom. In 2017, pros­e­cu­tors offered him a plea deal in which they dropped the rape charges and agreed to revise his mur­der sen­tence to time served. At the time, his lawyer, pub­lic defend­er John Thomas declared ​“Chris Tapp is inno­cent,” but stressed that the deal was the only way he was able to be set free.

In May 2019, police matched the DNA to a new sus­pect, Brian Dripps. Dripps con­fessed to hav­ing act­ed alone and told author­i­ties that he had nev­er heard of Tapp before. All charges against Tapp were dis­missed on July 17, 2019.

Tapp’s notice to the city alleges that Idaho Falls police vio­lat­ed his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights and that he was sub­ject to wrong­ful arrest, false impris­on­ment, neg­li­gence, inflic­tion of emo­tion­al dis­tress, defama­tion, and malicious prosecution.