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Thread: Paul Christopher Hildwin - Florida

  1. #21
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    Hernando man whose death sentence was overturned refuses to delay new trial

    By Dan DeWitt
    The Hernando Times

    BROOKSVILLE — In a move that surprised his own lawyer, a man who spent 28 years on death row has refused to wait any longer than necessary for the start of his retrial.

    Paul Hildwin, 54, whose first-degree murder conviction and death sentence for a 1985 Hernando County murder was overturned in June, had been expected to waive his right to a speedy trial when he appeared before Circuit Judge Stephen E. Toner on Thursday.

    That's what his lawyer, Junior Barrett, told the judge he thought would happen, based on earlier conversations with his client. That is also the plan that Barrett had relayed to prosecutor Ric Ridgway earlier this week, Ridgway said.

    Instead, Hildwin refused to waive his right and the trial is still scheduled for Sept. 29, leaving Barrett about five weeks to sift through more than 20 boxes of documents.

    "With (nearly) 30 years of evidence in this case, the file is rather large," Ridgway said.

    Hildwin was sentenced to death in 1986 for the killing of 42-year-old Vronzettie Cox, who he testified had picked him up while he was hitchhiking.

    At the time, scientific analysis indicated that Hildwin was part of a relatively small percentage of the population that could have produced the semen found on a pair of women's underwear at the crime scene. That analysis also showed that the semen could not belong to William Haverty, Cox's boyfriend and a potential suspect.

    The Florida Supreme Court ruling in June to overturn the conviction and sentence came after DNA testing revealed that the samples actually belonged to Haverty.

    This decision was based not only on the new DNA evidence, according to the court's opinion, but on evidence that was not admitted at Hildwin's original trial.

    This included a note from Haverty that showed he had been arguing with Cox, and an interview with Cox's nephew, who said he had talked to her at length on the night of Sept. 9, 1985 — several hours after prosecutors said she had been killed.

    State law says that in such cases a new trial must be set within 90 days from the time that the case is referred back to the circuit court; to comply, Toner had earlier set the September trial date.

    After Thursday's court appearance, Barrett would not say whether he will try to convince his client to reconsider and allow the trial to be postponed.

    Ridgway said that, even if that does not happen, his office will be ready.

    "If (Hildwin) wants a trial on the 29th, we'll be there to give him one."

    http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/...-trial/2194058
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  2. #22
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    Defense pushes for dismissal as 34-year-old Hernando murder case heads to retrial

    In 2014, the Florida Supreme Court overturned Paul Hildwin's conviction and death sentence in the 1985 killing of Vronzettie Cox. His attorney said he can't get a fair retrial.

    A 34-year-old murder case set for retrial next month returned to the courtroom Thursday with discussion that stretched into the night about the passage of time and the nature of memory.

    In 2014, the Florida Supreme Court, citing DNA evidence and faulty science during the original trial, overturned a sentence and granted a retrial for Paul Hildwin, 58. Hildwin was sentenced to death and spent 28 years in prison in the 1985 slaying of 42-year-old Vronzettie Cox, whose body was found stuffed in a car trunk in a remote part of Hernando County.

    Earlier this month, Hildwin's attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the case. At Thursday's hearing, defense attorney Lyann Goudie argued that Hildwin's original attorney, Daniel Lewan, was inexperienced and provided incompetent representation, failing to attack possible holes in the prosecution.

    What’s more, she said, many of the witnesses from Hildwin’s 1986 trial are dead or unable to testify because of memory loss. That combination makes it impossible for him to get a fair trial, she said.

    "When half this case is tried by former testimony, I'm 2nd chair to Lewan," Goudie said. "I'm second chair to a 3rd-year lawyer who'd never tried a murder case. ... Nobody asked the questions. Now (the witnesses) are dead."

    Hildwin's retrial is scheduled to start April 1. The state has indicated it will seek the death penalty again.

    As of Friday, Fifth Circuit Court Judge Stephen E. Toner had yet to issue a ruling on the motion to dismiss.

    Toner and attorneys on both sides repeatedly brought up the unusual nature of a case so old and the need to bring fresh eyes to a complicated history and set of facts.

    "Death is different, and the term ‘super-due process’ comes to mind," the judge said. "I am troubled by many concerns of things not being available to the defense, because of that. For want of a better phrase, it is what it is."

    Prosecutors argued that the defense built its case for dismissal at the original trial over what may end up being non-issues. Rules of evidence may limit much of the original testimony from now-unavailable witnesses, Assistant State Attorney Richard

    Buxman said, and he believes too many of the defense's other points are based on speculation.

    Buxman hasn't come across a case that was dismissed solely because of the passage of time, he said.

    The Supreme Court's 2014 ruling involved samples of semen and sweat found on a pair of women's underwear and a dishrag at the crime scene. The prosecution relied heavily on them in the original trial but linked the fluids to Hildwin with now-outdated science, the court said.

    Modern testing tied the samples to Cox's boyfriend, William Haverty.

    The defense argued at the original trial that Haverty was the most likely suspect in Cox's killing. Haverty later spent nearly 20 years in prison for an unrelated child sex abuse conviction, state records show.

    (source: Tampa Bay Times)
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  3. #23
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    He spent 28 years on death row for a Florida murder. Now, he’s free

    After 35 years, two death sentences and a thrown-out conviction, a case comes to an end.

    By Jack Evans
    Tampa Bay Times

    BROOKSVILLE — Paul Hildwin waited for nearly 35 years. He waited in jail and then prison and then jail again. He waited for, and then survived, a death warrant.

    He got cancer twice. He got sick of the iron and concrete surrounding him. He got a back tattoo of skulls and tombstones arranged in what he called a gateway to “my own living hell.”

    In 1996, ten years after a Hernando County jury sentenced him to death in the killing of 42-year-old Vronzettie Cox, he got a resentencing hearing. But that ended in yet another death sentence, and so he waited for death, until in 2014 the Florida Supreme Court overturned his sentence and gave him something else to wait for: A new trial and, maybe, the chance to feel grass beneath his feet again.

    He stopped waiting Monday. The new trial was set to begin that morning, but instead, he accepted a deal: He pleaded no-contest to second-degree murder in exchange for a suspended life sentence and eternal probation. Hours later, he walked out of the Hernando County jail.

    Hildwin’s attorney, Tampa-based lawyer Lyann Goudie, was surprised when prosecutors offered the deal late last week — she said she thought they’d dug in their heels. And she thought she could convince a jury that Hildwin, now 59, wasn’t guilty. But she said she understood Hildwin’s decision to take the clear shot at release rather than leave it up to a jury.

    “How in the world aren’t you going to take an opportunity to just get out of jail?” Goudie said.

    Hildwin will go to transitional housing in the Tampa area, Goudie said, though Goudie didn’t disclose a specific location.

    Hildwin’s long saga through the criminal justice system began in 1985, when he ran out of gas on U.S. 19 and took a ride from Cox. Four days later, her car was found in the woods. Her nude body was stuffed in the trunk. She had been strangled with a T-shirt, and investigators believed she’d been raped.

    Investigators found Hildwin with a ring and a radio stolen from Cox, and they learned he’d forged and cashed a $75 check from her checkbook. Hildwin told authorities that after Cox picked him up, she and her boyfriend started fighting, and he took them while they weren’t looking.

    Experts at the time linked semen and saliva found at the scene to Hildwin, and they said it couldn’t have belonged to the boyfriend. But decades later, after a push by the Innocence Project, modern testing showed that the fluids didn’t belong to Hildwin after all — and that they matched the boyfriend, William Haverty, who later spent 20 years in prison for an unrelated child sex abuse conviction.

    That was enough for the Florida Supreme Court to overturn the conviction and order a new trial. But several delays, some caused by changes in Hildwin’s legal team as well as his own health issues, meant nearly six more years elapsed in the meantime.

    The 34-year gulf set up a trial that would have relied on old testimony from more than a dozen witnesses who are now dead or otherwise incapacitated.

    Goudie had anticipated those testimonies would complicate the case — in her motion to dismiss the case last year, she argued that Hildwin’s original trial attorney was inexperienced and incompetent, and that without a new chance to cross-examine witnesses, he wouldn’t get a fair trial.

    Richard Buxman, the assistant state attorney prosecuting the case, said he too saw the lack of witnesses as a major problem, especially after the recent death of the lead crime scene technician.

    “There are a lot of legal difficulties trying a case where a lot of essential witnesses are deceased,” he said after Monday’s plea hearing. “We felt (the plea deal) was legally the best resolution to the case.”

    That feeling seemed to be shared by most in the courtroom Monday morning — Hildwin, the attorneys, Judge Stephen Toner — except for Vronzettie Cox’s children, who appeared via video, their faces broadcast to the courtroom with a television behind Toner.

    “The state of Florida has failed my family,” said a son who identified himself as Rodney. “They’ve failed my mother. The state has proven itself incompetent to find Paul either guilty or innocent ... I’m sure the interest of the state has been served, but I don’t think any of the human beings involved in this case have been served.”

    Hildwin left the Hernando County jail just after 11 a.m. Monday. He hugged his legal team, his voice barely a croak as he thanked them.

    Fifteen minutes later, he stepped barefoot onto the asphalt of a parking lot at nearby Tom Varn Park. His only outdoor time for decades had been confined by concrete floors and chain link canopies. He’d told Goudie that his only wish was to walk through the grass once more before he died.

    He crossed the parking lot and paused there at the threshold. He started to step and hesitated, one pale foot hovering for a long second over the grass. Then, as he leaned forward and dropped his foot, he let out a soft chuckle that sounded like surprise, or relief.

    “The things we take for granted, right?” said Goudie, standing next to him.

    Hildwin shuffled his feet across the earth. “It’s just the simplest things,” he said quietly.

    https://www.tampabay.com/news/crime/...-now-hes-free/

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