TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - The murder conviction that sent a man to death row 20 years ago was vacated Thursday, with the Florida Supreme Court saying that evidence withheld by prosecutors might have been enough to change the verdict.
James Floyd, now 45, was condemned for the fatal stabbing of Annie B. Anderson of St. Petersburg in January 1984.
A neighbor, Tina Glenn, told police she was watching "All My Children" when she saw a car pull up at the home of the elderly Anderson and saw two white men go inside. She saw them leave, acting suspiciously, about an hour later.
Two days later police arrested Floyd, a black man, as he tried to cash a check from Anderson's checkbook. Floyd said he got the checkbook from a trash bin. A jailhouse informant testified Floyd confessed to the murder.
Prosecutors never told Floyd's trial attorney about Glenn's testimony.
In Thursday's 4-2 decision, Florida's high court said the state's failure to provide the defense with that information and other, less significant information "severely compromised Floyds constitutional right to a fair trial."
The decision was supported fully by Chief Justice Barbara Pariente and Justices Harry Lee Anstead and Raoul Cantero. Justice R. Fred Lewis concurred in the result only; Justices Charles Wells and Kenneth Bell dissented and Justice Peggy Quince did not participate in the case.
Bernie McCabe, state attorney in Pinellas County, said he didn't know if the state would bring Floyd to trial again.
"We'll have to see what we can put together," he said.
But Martin McClain of Weston, a lawyer representing Floyd, said he didn't think Floyd would be convicted again.
"I'm convinced that if they take it back to trial they cannot get a conviction, based on what the neighbor lady saw," said McClain, a veteran lawyer for death row inmates.
In Thursday's unsigned opinion, the high court noted that there was no direct evidence against Floyd; no eyewitness or DNA evidence, or a fingerprint.
"Glenn's eyewitness account is unsettling, given the circumstantial nature of this case," the court wrote.
It might have made a difference in the outcome, and that means the conviction cannot stand, according to the opinion.
"We conclude that our confidence in the defendant's murder conviction has clearly been shaken by the evidence that the State suppressed in this case," the court wrote.
"While there is not a 'smoking gun' in the suppressed evidence that would completely exonerate the defendant, there was also not a 'smoking gun' in the State's case against him.
"Just as irrefutable evidence of guilt is not required for a conviction, irrefutable evidence of innocence is not required for a conviction to be set aside."
In another capital case Thursday, the high court ordered a trial judge to hold an evidentiary hearing in an appeal by Dwayne Parker, who is on death row for the 1989 murder of William Nicholson, a bar patron who chased Parker after a holdup at a nearby Pizza Hut in Pompano Beach.
