In his wal­let, Juan Florencio Ramos car­ries a pre-prison pho­to­graph of him­self. Because of a five-year ordeal too painful to for­get, Ramos now says: That per­son is not me.” [Times pho­to: Pam Royal]

Florida leads the nation in wrong­ful death sen­tences with 20. What has become of these survivors?

By SYDNEY P. FREEDBERG

July 41999

© St. Petersburg Times
 

Twelve years after he left Florida’s death row, Juan Florencio Ramos still paces like a pris­on­er locked in a tiny cell.

From the porch of his moth­er’s house near Miami, he gazes at strange cars. He puffs on Marlboros. And when he climbs into his red Trans Am, he hits the gas and races down the street as if the guards are com­ing to drag him back to prison.

Ramos, a 41-year-old truck dri­ver, is a mem­ber of a small but grow­ing club that pros­e­cu­tors don’t like to talk about.

Ramos, released from death row 12 years ago, feels less numb now, much calmer.” He lives in a mobile home next to his moth­er’s house near Miami. [Times pho­to: Pam Royal] Since 1972, 78 men and two women in the United States have been sen­tenced to death and then freed from death row — in some cas­es more than a decade lat­er — when it became clear they were inno­cent, or at least wrong­ly con­vict­ed because of flawed evi­dence, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct or oth­er problems.

Illinois, which has freed at least 12 con­demned inmates, the lat­est on May 17, has attract­ed most of the nation­al pub­lic­i­ty late­ly. But it is Florida — with 20 death row sur­vivors — that leads the nation in wrong­ful death sentences.

Three of the 20 came with­in 16 hours of the elec­tric chair. Their last meals had been ordered, their $150 bur­ial suits mea­sured, tai­lored and waiting.

What has become of Florida’s wrong­ly condemned?

One is dead, mur­dered on the streets of Medellin, Colombia, a few years after his release.

Two nev­er left state cus­tody. They are serv­ing out sen­tences for oth­er crimes.

Main sto­ry

We’d rather have died than to stay in that place for some­thing we did­n’t do’

I had noth­ing … The world I left no longer existed’

We don’t look back’

Yes, I’m angry.… Yes, I’m bit­ter. I’m frustrated’

The stig­ma is always there’

The 13 oth­er sur­vivors and their stories

Four got a taste of free­dom. They are back behind bars for offens­es they com­mit­ted after they were released.

The remain­ing 13 are back in soci­ety, free from death row but not from its shadows.

Many of those 13 live on the edge, mod­est­ly and anony­mous­ly, fear­ful that word of their past will get out, strug­gling to get back some of what they lost: mar­riages, self-respect, jobs, health, men­tal stability.

Outwardly, three or four of the sur­vivors seem per­fect­ly nor­mal, with fam­i­lies, nice homes and good jobs. But every day, they must deal with the mem­o­ries, the bit­ter­ness, the anger and fear.

Consider Juan Ramos. From his wal­let, he pulls out a pre-prison pho­to­graph of a fresh-faced young man with a hard body and smil­ing eyes. Now that body is scarred from prison fights, those eyes some­times glazed in anger.

That per­son,” he says, chok­ing back tears, is not me.”

Experts say wrong­ful death sen­tences are built on sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances: police who use coerced con­fes­sions or ques­tion­able eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tions; pros­e­cu­tors who exploit false tes­ti­mo­ny or inac­cu­rate sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence; jurors who are taint­ed by prej­u­dice; judges who are out for head­lines; and sus­pects who are easy marks — because of their race, crim­i­nal back­ground or inabil­i­ty to afford a good lawyer.

Only five of Florida’s wrong­ly con­demned have received com­pen­sa­tion from the state, and they say the mon­ey can’t replace what they lost.

There’s an irony in the sto­ries of death row sur­vivors: It took a death sen­tence to free them. If they had received a life sen­tence, they prob­a­bly nev­er would have got­ten out.

Michael L. Radelet, a University of Florida soci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor who doc­u­ments wrong­ful exe­cu­tions, says death row sur­vivors are the lucky ones because only through good for­tune and care­ful scruti­ny of their cas­es were they vin­di­cat­ed before a fatal error. As long as we have the death penal­ty,” Radelet says, inno­cent peo­ple will be executed.”

With more cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment cas­es and shrink­ing legal resources, the dan­ger of wrong­ful con­vic­tions and wrong­ful exe­cu­tions is get­ting worse,” says Richard Dieter, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington.

Most pros­e­cu­tors, judges and Florida offi­cials won’t admit an inno­cent per­son has ever been exe­cut­ed here or con­vict­ed in error.

But Gerald Kogan, who recent­ly retired after 11 years on the Florida Supreme Court, told the Associated Press in December that he was­n’t con­vinced of guilt in two or three” of the 25 state exe­cu­tions while he was on the court.

There are sev­er­al cas­es where I had grave doubts as to the guilt of a par­tic­u­lar per­son, (and) oth­er cas­es where I just felt they were treat­ed unfair­ly in the sys­tem,” Kogan said.

Kogan, a for­mer pros­e­cu­tor, refus­es to elab­o­rate on which cas­es he had in mind. I’ve said what I’m going to say on that. I don’t want to talk about that any more.”

Gov. Jeb Bush, who has signed death war­rants to send two con­vict­ed killers to the elec­tric chair this week, declined to com­ment for this sto­ry. In meet­ings, Bush has voiced con­cern about peo­ple on death row who may be inno­cent, accord­ing to Carol Licko, his gen­er­al counsel.

She says the gov­er­nor signed the war­rants only after a care­ful review of the cas­es to elim­i­nate any pos­si­bil­i­ty of a wrong­ful execution.

Life on death row

Each of the cells is 6 feet wide, 9 feet long and 91/​2 feet high, with con­crete walls on three sides and steel bars in front that look out over a 3‑foot-wide cat­walk. Each cell has a steel toi­let, a steel sink, a steel foot­lock­er and a steel bunk with a mat­tress 4 inch­es thick. Each cell also is equipped with a 13-inch black-and-white tele­vi­sion. Meals, mail and Bibles are passed to the con­demned through a slot in the bars

Inmates can’t see into oth­er cells, but they can look down the cor­ri­dor by angling a piece of a mir­ror. They com­mu­ni­cate with one anoth­er by talk­ing down the cor­ri­dor — called get­ting on the bars” — or yelling through a vent or the plumb­ing pipes. Or throw­ing a long stick with a note attached to the per­son in the next cell.

Twice a week, they are let out for a two-hour trip to an exer­cise yard. Three times a week, they are escort­ed to the show­er stall, where the water runs for five min­utes. Occasionally, guards jerk open a cell door to search an inmate’s belong­ings or body for drugs or shanks (crude, home­made knives).

Death row sur­vivors remem­ber the numb­ing cold in win­ter, the hell­ish heat in sum­mer and the non-stop din of hun­dreds of voic­es and nois­es, relieved only by an eerie qui­et on exe­cu­tion days.

Alone with noth­ing but time, they did almost any­thing to keep their minds occupied.

They count­ed every dent in the walls, every crevice on the floor. They learned the heavy foot­steps of their favorite night­time guard. They prayed for life and some­times hoped for death.

They slept and wrote poet­ry, usu­al­ly at night when there was less noise. They read and argued about things such as whether to go to the exe­cu­tion cham­ber kick­ing and scream­ing or like a man.”

Anthony Peek, who sur­vived a decade on the row, paced so much — five steps back and forth — that his knees are weak. Dave Keaton, released from death row 26 years ago, could catch a glimpse of the after­noon sun if he stood at the right angle. Sonia Sunny” Jacobs, who for a time was the only woman in the coun­try on death row, paint­ed by dip­ping strands of her hair in beet juice.

One rule of sur­vival: be bud­dies with every­one but close friends with no one. That’s because it hurts too much when a friend is executed.

Anthony Brown, who watched and lis­tened 12 times as guards pre­pared for exe­cu­tions, tears up when he remem­bers his final hours with Marvin Francois. Francois, 39, was exe­cut­ed in 1985 for killing six peo­ple dur­ing a rob­bery of a Miami drug house.

We want­ed to send him out on a high,” says Brown, 43, recount­ing how they shared a cig­a­rette and fan­ta­sized it was a joint. It took a lit­tle out of me when they killed him. I’d grown real attached to him.”

No mat­ter how they passed the time, they had one thing in com­mon: a date with death in Florida’s elec­tric chair.

Too painful to forget

No mat­ter how hard he screams,” Ramos says, no one hears him.

Ramos grew up in Cuba, served three years in the Cuban mil­i­tary and came to Florida in the 1980 Mariel boatlift. Within a year, he was mar­ried, liv­ing in Cocoa and mak­ing $11 an hour in a steel factory.

His new world col­lapsed in June 1982 when police arrest­ed him for rap­ing, beat­ing, stran­gling and stab­bing Sue Cobb, 27, an acquain­tance who lived a block away. No phys­i­cal evi­dence linked Ramos to the homi­cide, but there was seem­ing­ly damn­ing evi­dence pro­vid­ed by a police dog named Harass II.

After sniff­ing an emp­ty pack of Ramos’ cig­a­rettes, the dog was put in a room with five knives and five blous­es. Harass stopped at blouse No. 5, the vic­tim’s bloody blouse, then licked knife No. 3, the blood­stained knife that had been embed­ded in her chest.

These were the only knife and blouse with blood on them — which seemed to prove only that Harass was attract­ed to blood. But that was enough for a Seminole County jury to con­vict Ramos, who spoke lit­tle English, and for a judge to over­rule its rec­om­men­da­tion of life and sen­tence him to death.

Norman Wolfinger, who was Ramos’ pub­lic defend­er and now is state attor­ney for Seminole and Brevard coun­ties, cit­ed anoth­er fac­tor in what he called the weak­est mur­der case I’ve ever seen” — racism. Absolutely no attempt was made from Day One to pin the mur­der on any­one but the sap, the Cuban,” Wolfinger said at the time.

Isolated from the world, Ramos remained defi­ant in his cell on death row. I thought about my last meal,” he says. I was gonna tell them, Just feed me the same s — . It’s dis­gust­ing of you to offer me the best food when I’m gonna puke it back in your face.’ ”

Before he talked to the Times, Ramos, who learned English on death row, had nev­er spo­ken about his ordeal to the media. His 61-year-old moth­er, Ena Garcia, tells him not to talk now. You know it upsets you,” she says in Spanish. Why start trouble?”

But Ramos needs to talk, and for six hours, at times angry, at times tear­ful, he pours out details of his five years of wrong­ful impris­on­ment: beat­ings, a stab­bing, par­a­lyt­ic asth­ma attacks and an attempt­ed gang rape.

Once, he tried to com­mit sui­cide by mak­ing a noose with a bed­sheet, tying it to the bars and stick­ing his head inside the loop. Another time, he fought with a guard and was sent to soli­tary, now known as X‑wing.” The cell doors in X‑wing” are sol­id steel. To see out, Ramos scrunched his face against a half-inch crack between the steel door and the con­crete wall.

And in his reg­u­lar cell, he steeled him­self for Old Sparky,” once shock­ing him­self with the hot wire of his TV. I want­ed to know what it felt like to get cooked,” he says.

While Ramos tried to keep a grip on his san­i­ty, his lawyers fought for his life in the courts. In October 1985, they got a boost when the TV news­magazine 20/​20 exposed the unre­li­a­bil­i­ty of scent-track­ing dogs, includ­ing Harass II, the German shep­herd that put Ramos behind bars. The dogs and their train­er, 20/​20 report­ed, had sev­er­al times iden­ti­fied sus­pects who prob­a­bly were innocent.

In August 1986, the Florida Supreme Court reversed Ramos’ con­vic­tion, rul­ing that the dog-scent evi­dence was com­plete­ly untest­ed. At a retri­al, Ramos was acquit­ted, and on April 24, 1987, he drove to his new home in Miami.

He enjoyed long show­ers and time with his wife, Danette, whom he leaned on to guide him. But he felt like a time bomb.” He had a hard time relat­ing to peo­ple, espe­cial­ly women. They talked only about super­fi­cial things,” he says. How can they real­ly under­stand what it’s like to be on death row?”

Ramos went into ther­a­py, but four years ago his mar­riage fell apart. He moved in with his moth­er, claim­ing a mobile home on the prop­er­ty in south Miami-Dade County. He plant­ed avo­ca­do, man­go and sug­ar-cane trees, and now cares for four dogs, a cat and 20 roost­ers that wan­der around behind the locked front gate.

Every night, Ramos comes home to a hug from his moth­er and the smell of her cook­ing. Every morn­ing, she deliv­ers him cafe Cubano in a thim­ble cup.

Ramos says he feels less numb now, much calmer.” The only time the adren­a­line real­ly pumps is when he’s tool­ing around in his red Trans Am or haul­ing steel in a semi­trail­er truck. As a truck dri­ver, no one looks over his shoul­der or watch­es what he’s doing.

Still, he feels like a pris­on­er some­times — able to face up to death but wor­ried he can’t face up to life.

I came here (to America) for a bet­ter life,” he says. In Cuba, I’d be dead. I was found inno­cent here, but it did­n’t wipe any­thing away. You’re free, but free for what? The best, best years of my life are gone.… I car­ry this with me until the day I die.”