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DNA casts light, doubt on '86 death row case
LYDA LONGA of The Tampa Tribune
Jun 26, 2001
The case against a man who
was sentenced to Florida's death row 15 years ago
by the late Harry Lee Coe
III for the rape and murder of a 17-year-old girl
might be falling apart.
Attorneys defending Rudolph
Holton presented the results Monday of a DNA
test that could help clear
Holton in the 1986 slaying of Katrina Graddy.
The test shows that hairs
found inside a shaving kit discovered near the
crime scene and loosely
linked to Holton by a witness did not come from the
defendant or the victim,
said defense lawyer Martin McClain.
``There's really not much
evidence at this point that links Rudolph Holton
to this murder,'' McClain
said.
``My client has been sitting
on death row for 15 years for a crime he did
not commit.''
Holton was convicted in December
1986 of raping Graddy, strangling her and
burning her body.
The teenager lived on Scott
Street in what neighbors called a crack house,
court records show.
But Holton's attorneys have
been filing one challenge after another, and now
even prosecutors are conceding
that the case is in trouble.
This year Holton's attorneys
successfully argued that the judge, Coe, made
an error when he sentenced
Holton to death.
Coe, who later became Hillsborough
County's state attorney, committed
suicide last year.
DNA testing did not exist
in 1986, and Holton was convicted largely on the
statements of a handful
of witnesses whose testimony has since unraveled.
The prosecution's chief witness,
a jailhouse informant who said Holton
confessed to the murder,
later recanted.
Tampa lawyer Joe Episcopo,
who prosecuted Holton, said that the informant
was the state's strongest
witness.
``Now, even I have second thoughts about this case,'' Episcopo said Monday.
And many of the other witnesses
who had testified against Holton admitted
during a hearing in April
that they had lied about seeing Holton with Graddy
the night she died.
One witness who said that
he had given Holton a ride to Graddy's house and
told police that Holton
was carrying a shaving kit later said that he was
drunk and might have misidentified
Holton.
Besides the shaving kit,
the only physical evidence against Holton was a
pack of cigarettes found
in another room of the house Graddy lived in.
Police found Holton's fingerprints
on the pack, but Holton said that he had
smoked crack at the home
before and probably had discarded the pack.
Police said there was other
trash in the room, including other cigarette
packs.
The issue now is whether Holton should be granted a new trial.
Prosecutors are expected to review the case Thursday.
There will be another hearing
before Hillsborough Circuit Judge Daniel Perry
on Friday.
``It's no secret that if
this case was retried now, it would be a lot
different than it was 15
years ago,'' said Assistant State Attorney Wayne
Chalu.
Mina Morgan, Holton's original
defense attorney, said the case against
Holton has come undone.
``Rudolph Holton was a burglar
and a drug addict,'' she said Monday, ``but
he was never a murderer.''
Lyda Llonga can be reached
at (813) 259-7638.
The case against convicted
murderer Rudolph Holton, on Florida's death
row for 15 years, has been
in doubt for months, now that witnesses have
recanted and evidence has
been discredited.
But in a last-ditch attempt
to save the case Wednesday, prosecutors said
they wanted to test one
more piece of evidence to determine whether
Holton's fingerprints and
DNA are on it, said defense attorney Martin
McClain.
"This is a fishing expedition,"
McClain said. "They just want to cover up
mistakes made 15 years ago
by the detectives who handled the case. They
have absolutely no evidence,
and now they want to submit this for DNA.
"They want to stall so they
can keep my client in jail longer. He's
already been there for 15
years for something he did not do," McClain
added.
Prosecutors want the Florida
Department of Law Enforcement to test shards
of glass from the green
bottle that was used to rape Katrina Graddy in
June 1986, McClain said.
Though the 17-year-old's
body was set afire after she was raped and
strangled at her house on
Scott Street, remnants of the bottle were found
scattered about the room
where she was attacked and have been kept in a
brown paper bag since the
slaying, court records show.
Assistant State Attorney
Pam Bondi said McClain and attorneys at the
Capital Collateral Regional
Council, the agency that represents Florida's
death row inmates, want
only certain pieces of evidence tested.
"We want it all tested, not
just some of it," Bondi said. "15 years ago,
the citizens of Hillsborough
County and the Florida Supreme Court decided
they had enough evidence
to convict Rudolph Holton of 1st-degree murder.
We stand by that."
But that evidence and the
case against Holton have since become
questionable.
Witnesses for the prosecution,
who placed Holton at the crime scene the
night Graddy was murdered,
have admitted they lied; a missing police
report that could clear
Holton recently surfaced; and the results of a
recent DNA test disproved
a state witness.
The witness testified that
he had seen Holton with a shaving kit the
night Graddy was killed.
But a recent DNA test showed hair found in the
shaving kit did not belong
to Holton or Graddy. The witness later
admitted he misidentified
Holton.
In addition, McClain said
Tampa homicide Detectives Kevin Durkin and J.S.
Noblitt neglected to question
David Pierson, a Tampa man who Graddy said
had raped and threatened
her 10 days before her death.
"Graddy, her mother and her
sister all went to the police and told
detectives that Katrina
had been raped by Pierson," McClain said. "Police
reports were filled out
to this effect. But none of those reports ever
came out in the original
trial 15 years ago. They were just discovered
this past March.
"Pierson killed Katrina Graddy
because she reported the rape," McClain
said. "A man who was cutting
Pierson's hair a few days after the killing
told police that Pierson
confessed to the rape and the murder."
Holton was sentenced to death
in December 1986 by then-Circuit Judge
Harry Lee Coe III. Coe,
who later became Hillsborough state attorney,
committed suicide in July.
This year, McClain and lawyer
Linda McDermott fired off a series of
challenges to show that
Coe erred in Holton's sentencing. DNA testing did
not exist in 1986, and Holton
was convicted largely on the statements of
witnesses - including a
jailhouse snitch - whose testimonies have
unraveled.
As a result, Hillsborough
Circuit Judge Daniel Perry granted Holton a new
sentencing hearing and is
deciding whether he should have a new trial.
That could be determined
at a hearing Friday.
(source: Tampa Tribune)
Attorneys for the convicted
murderer say that evidence such as
recanted testimony would
have altered the verdict.
In Tampa, Circuit Judge Daniel
Perry is expected to decide in 3 weeks
whether Rudolph Holton should
get a new trial for the 1986 murder of a
prostitute that sent him
to Florida's death row 15 years ago.
During arguments Friday,
attorneys for Holton tried to convince Perry
that newly uncovered evidence
probably would have changed the jury's
verdict. Among the new information
was the revelation that witnesses
have recanted.
But Assistant State Attorney
Wayne Chalu argued that Holton received a
fair trial, if not a perfect
one.
"A new trial should only
be granted if new evidence is sufficient to
undermine the confidence
of the outcome," Chalu said. "This is not the
case here."
The hearing began with Perry
shooting down a motion by prosecutors that
asked for more time to gather
evidence.
Prosecutors wanted time to
conduct DNA tests on saliva taken from a man
Holton's attorney has identified
as the real killer of 17-year-old
Katrina Graddy.
They wanted to disprove claims
by the defense that David Pearson was
responsible. They are also
asking that DNA tests be conducted on a broken
bottle used in the assault
and on a T-shirt gathered as evidence.
But Perry declined those requests.
That decision pleased Holton's
attorney, Martin McClain, who argued that
tests should be conducted
only if a new trial is granted.
McClain, a New York attorney
handling the case for the Capital Collateral
Regional Counsel, a state
agency that represents death row inmates, said
the new evidence he has
uncovered would give Holton an "entirely
different trial."
The case against Holton began
unraveling last year when prosecutors
agreed to a new sentencing
hearing because of procedural errors made by
Harry Lee Coe when he was
a circuit judge and sentenced Holton to death.
Holton was convicted of the
rape and strangulation of Graddy, who was set
on fire in an abandoned
house on Scott Street.
In April, Perry ordered DNA
tests on a hair found at the murder scene.
The results, released Monday,
showed the hair did not belong to Holton
despite claims during the
trial that it probably had belonged to him.
McClain has argued that witnesses
claiming to have seen Holton at the
Scott Street house have
recanted, as did a jailhouse informant who
originally testified that
Holton confessed to him.
Perry said he will make a decision the week of July 23.
(source: St. Petersburg
Times)
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