Florida Court Grants Hearing to James Dailey on Innocence Claim

A Florida state court judge has grant­ed death-row pris­on­er James Dailey an evi­den­tiary hear­ing on his claim that he did not com­mit the mur­der for which he was sen­tenced to death three decades ago.

On February 20, 2020, Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court Judge Pat Siracusa agreed to a defense request to present tes­ti­mo­ny from con­fessed killer Jack Pearcy that Dailey (pic­tured) — a vet­er­an who served three tours of duty in Vietnam and anoth­er in Korea — had no involve­ment in the 1985 mur­der of 14-year-old Shelly Boggio. Pearcy has admit­ted at least five times to hav­ing choked Boggio and stabbed her more than 30 times before final­ly drown­ing her in Florida’s Intracoastal Waterway. In late December, defense lawyers obtained an affi­davit from Pearcy admit­ting that he had act­ed alone and stat­ing clear­ly that Dailey had noth­ing to do with Boggio’s abduc­tion and murder.

Florida had set a November 7, 2019 exe­cu­tion date for Dailey, but a fed­er­al judge issued a tem­po­rary stay on October 23 to per­mit his new fed­er­al lawyers 90 days to inves­ti­gate and present claims relat­ing to his innocence.

After the state court’s rul­ing, Dailey’s lead coun­sel, Joshua Dubin, released a state­ment to the media say­ing: ​“We are pleased that Judge Siracusa has agreed to hold a hear­ing, where he will be able to hear Jack Pearcy tes­ti­fy for the first time about how he and he alone mur­dered Shelly Boggio, and then allowed Mr. Dailey to take the fall for his crime. We are con­fi­dent that once the truth is pre­sent­ed, it will be clear that the State of Florida can­not and must not move for­ward with the exe­cu­tion of an innocent man.”

“[T]his is one more step toward jus­tice for James Dailey,” Dubin told the Tampa Bay Times. ​“It’s hard to wrap your head around how long this man has been incar­cer­at­ed, for more than three decades, for a crime he didn’t commit.”

Dailey was cap­i­tal­ly pros­e­cut­ed short­ly after state pros­e­cu­tors failed to obtain a death sen­tence against Pearcy. By the prosecution’s own admis­sion, no ​“phys­i­cal evi­dence,” ​“no fin­ger­prints,” and ​“no hair or fibers” linked Dailey to the crime. Instead, he was con­vict­ed based on Pearcy’s since-recant­ed tes­ti­mo­ny; dra­mat­ic tes­ti­mo­ny from Paul Skalnik, a pro­lif­ic jail­house infor­mant whom police records described as a ​“Con-man extra­or­di­naire”; and tes­ti­mo­ny from two oth­er jail­house infor­mants who evi­dence lat­er showed had been pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion about the mur­der by police and had received reduced charges for claim­ing Dailey had con­fessed to them.

In January, Dailey’s lawyers filed a motion in state court seek­ing an evi­den­tiary hear­ing based on new­ly obtained evi­dence of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct in his case and addi­tion­al evi­dence of his inno­cence. That fil­ing alleged that Prosecutor Robert Heyman had com­mit­ted ​“a fraud on the court” by with­hold­ing evi­dence that Skalnik had evad­ed child sex­u­al assault charges in exchange for being a coop­er­at­ing infor­mant and delib­er­ate­ly fail­ing to cor­rect Skalnik’s tes­ti­mo­ny after he had lied to the jury that none of the charges against him had ever involved rape or any form of phys­i­cal vio­lence. Heyman’s hand­writ­ten notes from the tri­al include the crossed-out phrase ​“sex­u­al assault” in con­nec­tion with Skalnik’s record, and he admit­ted to ABC News in a January inter­view that “[w]e knew there was a sex­u­al assault involved.” Heyman also told ABC News that Skalnik had approached the pros­e­cu­tion to be an infor­mant in the case before ever hav­ing met Dailey.

Dubin told the Times that the defense plans to depose Pearcy before the March 5 hear­ing and expects that he will reaf­firm under oath his December 28 state­ment that ​“James Dailey had noth­ing to do with the mur­der of Shelly Boggio. I com­mit­ted the crime alone. James Dailey was back at the house when I drove Shelly Boggio to the place where I ulti­mate­ly killed her.”

“I’m hope­ful,” Dubin said, ​”that this is only going to be the tip of the ice­berg in set­ting off a series of pro­ceed­ings that we think will result in James Dailey get­ting a new tri­al at some point.”