The Florida Supreme Court
overturns a conviction for a Heathrow chef on death row for murder.
The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday ordered a new trial for a Heathrow prep chef who was given the death penalty after a Seminole County jury convicted him of murdering his wheelchair-bound neighbor and her adult daughter.
The suspect, Clemente Javier Aguirre, lived next door to the victims in a trailer park near Altamonte Springs.
The victims’ bodies were found in their home. Carol Bareis, 68, had been stabbed twice and toppled from her wheelchair. Her daughter, Cheryl A. Williams, 47, was found in a different room with 129 knife wounds.
Aguirre’s case had become a minor cause célebre. The Innocence Project had taken him on, and a small phalanx of high-profile lawyers, including a former Florida Supreme Court justice and the former attorneys general of four states, had called for a new trial, based on new evidence.
On appeal, defense lawyers argued that new DNA tests suggested that the real killer was a family member, Samantha Lee Williams, the granddaughter of the woman in the wheelchair, who also lived in the trailer.
Before Aguirre’s trial, experts conducted DNA tests on the murder weapon — a 10-inch kitchen knife — and the defendant’s clothes. Afterward experts hired by the defense tested more than 130 other pieces of evidence.
They found eight drops of Samantha Williams’ blood in the trailer, including a drop on the kitchen floor, which her mother had mopped the night before the slayings.
Williams told Seminole County deputies that she had argued with her mother the evening before the homicides then left and spent the night at her boyfriend’s house, which he confirmed.
At a 2013 hearing, after she became the centerpiece of Aguirre’s appeal, she testified that she had been severely mentally ill for years and sometimes flew into rages. She said she had been Baker Acted — involuntarily detained while medical experts determined whether she was a threat to herself or others — 60 times.
After Aguirre’s conviction, on five occasions she told friends and neighbors that she killed her mother and grandmother, the Florida Supreme
Court wrote.
She told one friend “that the demons had made her do it,” the high court noted.
Those statements and the new DNA findings, the Florida Supreme Court ruled, raised doubt about Aguirre’s guilt and justified a new trial.
A spokeswoman at the Office of State Attorney Phil Archer said Thursday that it would retry Aguirre, now age 36.
Aguirre, who went by the nickname “Shorty,” told deputies that he had been drinking and wandered into the murder scene about 5 a.m. on June 17, 2004, hoping to find find beer. Instead he discovered the bodies, checked them for signs of life then left, he said.
Their blood was found on his clothes and shoes.
The murder weapon was found on the ground between Aguirre’s and the victims’ homes. It had both victims’ blood on it and belonged to a set used at the restaurant where Aguirre worked, according to evidence.
Aguirre told jurors that when he was inside the victims’ trailer, he saw it, picked it up and carried it outside.
Thursday’s decision was a victory for the Innocence Project, which had joined the campaign to free Aguirre; the office of Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, the public defenders who represent Florida death row inmates; and attorney Lindsey Boney, of Birmingham, Ala.
They also had the support of Texas’ former governor and attorney general Mark White; former Florida Supreme Court Justice Gerald Kogan; former Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro, former Tennessee Attorney General W.J. Michael Cody and four former Virginia attorneys general.
Aguirre, a native of Honduras who was in the country illegally, has always maintained his innocence. In court shortly before he was sentenced in 2006, he jumped to his feet and yelled, “They’re trying to kill me for no reason. I didn’t kill nobody.”