Rush to execute is pure blood lust
Aguirre-Jarquin shows death penalty policy can lead to injustice.
The state of Florida spent the past 14 years trying to kill Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin.
The zeal to execute this undocumented immigrant from Honduras for a gruesome double murder was unrelenting ... even after someone else confessed to the crimes.
Even after evidence showed his blood wasn’t at the crime scene where victims had been stabbed more than 130 times — and that blood from the woman who’d confessed there — the state still wanted him dead.
That finally changed this past week. The state admitted flaws in its case and dropped all charges against the man who’d been convicted and imprisoned for nearly 14 years.
In most places, news that the state wrongly sent someone to death row would be shocking.
But in Florida, it’s almost routine.
About once every 18 months, Florida realizes it incorrectly sentenced someone to die.
We’ve taken 28 people off death row over the last 45 years — more than any other state in America.
And the politicians don’t seem to care. Instead of pushing for reform, they push things like the “Timely Justice Act” … so we can kill people faster.
It plays well in the polls. But killing without accuracy isn’t justice. It’s blood lust.
In Aguirre-Jarquin’s case, someone else actually confessed five times to four people. And not just any someone. The confessor was the daughter and granddaughter of the victims … the
same person who helped prosecutors convict Aguirre-Jarquin back in 2006 by testifying against him.
After defense attorneys learned all this — that Williams had repeatedly confessed and had a history of violent behavior — they assumed the case would be over.
They were wrong. Judge Jessica Recksiedler refused to overturn the conviction and kept him on death row.
Recksiedler would later use her tough-on-anaccused-murderer ruling to try to score a judicial promotion before a group of political appointees.
But the Florida Supreme Court overturned the conviction, saying Recksiedler got it wrong. In a unanimous order, the court said the new evidence not only raised “reasonable doubt” about Aguirre-Jarquin’s guilt, but made him look like a “scapegoat.”
It might have ended there. But prosecutor Phil Archer wanted to try again.
The Seminole-Brevard state attorney said he didn’t believe the immigrant’s story about finding the dead bodies of his next-door neighbors and trying to help. He said Williams’ blood at the scene could be explained, since she lived with her mother and grandmother. And he didn’t believe her confessions, since she had a history of mental health issues — and an alibi that night.
But as Aguirre-Jarquin’s second trial was slated to start last week, new evidence surfaced to cast doubt on Williams’ alibi. And on Monday afternoon, the state admitted it had no case and set Aguirre-Jarquin free.
There was no apology or admission of error. Archer simply said he didn’t see “a reasonable likelihood of success at trial.”
Recksiedler would not comment on the case.
But I’ll give you a few comments.
First of all, the system failed this man —
— most every step of the way.
Aguirre-Jarquin had only two saving graces — the Florida Supreme Court and the Innocence Project, which fought for him when nobody else would.
And know this: It was a long and costly fight — half a dozen lawyers working for years, donating more than $3 million worth of legal services. (To learn more about the Innocence Project, visit InnocenceProject.org.)
Second, remember this
Many of Florida’s death-row inmates sat there for more than a decade before evidence surfaced to free them.
It can take time to get things right … especially when the state isn’t trying hard enough.
That’s what former Judge O.H. Eaton Jr. fears happened here. “This case is a perfect example of the police focusing on the target they think is guilty and ignoring other possibilities,” Eaton said last week.
Eaton knows this case better than most. He was the one who originally sentenced Aguirre-Jarquin to die.
Yes, in another remarkable development, a leading voice about the injustice was the judge who presided over his original trial.
Eaton, a respected former senior judge, says he has come to believe the death penalty is flawed.
For starters, capital punishment discriminates based on gender, geography and class. Men are more likely to be executed. So are people who live in Southern states or conservative regions. So are the poor. Said Eaton: “Those without the capital get the punishment.”
The system is also inherently biased since potential jurors who oppose the death penalty are often rejected.
Eaton doesn’t argue that anyone involved in this particular case knowingly tried to kill an innocent man. Neither do I. But the system fatally flawed.
Theoretically, when someone is wrongly incarcerated in Florida, they’re entitled to $50,000 a year. But most people never get that compensation. And in Aguirre-Jarquin’s case, his reward may be deportation.
Some advocates say he should be granted asylum. I won’t argue his citizenship status. But I will argue the state should pay for its error.
If you’re having trouble sympathizing, try looking through another lens. Imagine if some other country locked up an American for 14 years for crimes he didn’t commit and then, when caught, simply sent the American back home without compensation or even an apology. You’d probably find that savage.
Well, trying to kill the wrong person is savage.
And it’s something Florida has tried to do 28 times … that we know of.