Florida Supreme Court Vacates Capital Conviction on Innocence Claim

With new­ly dis­cov­ered con­fes­sions and DNA evi­dence point­ing to the prosecution’s chief wit­ness as the actu­al killer, the Florida Supreme Court, on October 27, vacat­ed the cap­i­tal con­vic­tion of death-row pris­on­er Clemente Aguirre.

Aguirre was con­vict­ed of killing his two neigh­bors — an elder­ly woman and her adult daugh­ter — but he has always main­tained his inno­cence and claimed that he dis­cov­ered the women after they were deceased. After he was con­vict­ed, Aguirre’s post-con­vic­tion attor­neys dis­cov­ered that the daugh­ter and grand-daugh­ter of the vic­tims, Samantha Williams, had con­fessed to at least five dif­fer­ent peo­ple that she killed her rel­a­tives, and DNA results show that her blood was at the crime scene. 

According to the Innocence Project, “[n]one of the DNA found on the 84 items that were test­ed matched Aguirre; most matched to the two vic­tims, but two blood­stains were iden­ti­fied as com­ing from … Samantha Williams.” In addi­tion, ​“Samantha’s eight blood­stains had been col­lect­ed from four dif­fer­ent rooms — includ­ing in the bath­room where the state had argued at tri­al that the killer would have cleaned up — and each was found inch­es away from the vic­tims’ blood.” 

In its deci­sion, the Florida Supreme Court said, ​“when com­pared to the evi­dence intro­duced at tri­al, the new­ly dis­cov­ered evi­dence plac­ing Samantha’s blood (rather than Aguirre’s) at crit­i­cal loca­tions of the crime scene cou­pled with Samantha’s numer­ous con­fes­sions to mul­ti­ple indi­vid­u­als that she killed the vic­tims ​‘weak­ens the case against [Aguirre] so as to give rise to a rea­son­able doubt as to his cul­pa­bil­i­ty,’ enti­tling Aguirre to a new trial.” 

Although Aguirre’s attor­neys are urg­ing pros­e­cu­tors to drop the charges against him, a spokesper­son for the Office of State Attorney Phil Archer said they intend to retry Aguirre. The tri­al judge imposed two death sen­tences upon Aguire after the jury had vot­ed 7 – 5 and 9 – 3 in favor of death in the two murders. 

Twenty-six men and women have been exon­er­at­ed from death row in Florida, the most in the nation. New data sug­gest that wrong­ful cap­i­tal con­vic­tions may be more like­ly in cas­es in which juries do not reach unan­i­mous rec­om­men­da­tions for death. 18 of the 20 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.