Exonerated: The Play's Characters

Sonia Jacobs, Florida
Conviction: 1976, Released: 1992
Jacobs and her companion, Jesse Tafero, were sentenced to death for the murder of two policemen at a highway rest stop in 1976.
A third co-defendant received a life sentence after
pleading guilty and testifying against Jacobs and Tafero.
The jury recommended a life sentence for Jacobs,
but the judge overruled the jury and imposed death.
A childhood friend and filmmaker, Micki Dickoff, then became
interested in her case. Jacobs's conviction was overturned on a
federal writ of habeas corpus in 1992.
Following the discovery that the chief prosecution witness had given
contradictory statements, the prosecutor accepted a plea in which Jacobs
did not admit guilt, and she was immediately released.
Jesse Tafero, whose conviction was based on much of the same highly
questionable evidence, had been executed in 1990
before the evidence of innocence had been uncovered.
(Provided by http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=6&did=111#Released)



Kerry Max Cook, Texas
Conviction: 1978, Released: Nov. 1997, Concluded: 1999
Cook was originally convicted of killing Linda Jo Edwards in 1978.
In 1988, he came within 11 days of execution, when the U.S. Supreme
Court ordered the Texas Court to review its decision.
Cook's conviction was overturned in 1991.
He was re-tried in 1992, but the trial ended in a hung jury.
In 1993, a state district judge ruled that prosecutors had
engaged in systematic misconduct, surpressing key evidence.
In 1994, Cook was tried again, and this time found guilty and again sentenced to death.
On Nov. 6, 1996, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed his conviction,
saying that "prosecutorial and police misconduct has tainted this
entire matter from the outset."
The court ruled that key testimony from the 1994 trial could not
be used in any further prosecution.
Prior to the start of his fourth trial in February, 1999,
Cook pleaded no contest to a reduced murder charge and was released.
He continued to maintain his complete innocence,
but accepted the deal to avoid the possibility of another wrongful conviction.
Recent DNA tests from the victim matched that of an ex-boyfriend, and not that of Cook.
This tended to contradict testimony from the ex-boyfriend.
(Provided by http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=6&did=111#Released)



Delbert Tibbs, Florida
Convicted 1987; Released 1992
Mr. Tibbs was convicted of rape and murder and was sentenced to death.
He was arrested because a highway patrolman believed that he resembled
a description given by a victim who had survived the incident. Police check
out Mr. Tibbs's alibi and released him. Some time later, however,
the victim was shown a picture of Mr. Tibbs and identified him as
the perpetrator. This victim's identification was the crux of the prosecution's case,
even though the woman admitted that she was under the influence of illegal drugs
on the day in question. On appeal, the Florida Supreme Court recognized the paucity of the prosecution's case and ordered a new trial. The State ultimately decided
not to even retry Mr. Tibbs, however, once the prosecutor from the first
trial came forward and said that he would testify on behalf of Mr. Tibbs at
any new trial. This prosecutor stated that he would tell the jury that the case
against Mr. Tibbs was tainted from the start, and that the police and prosecutors
knew it. All charges against Mr. Tibbs were then dropped.
(Provided by http://www.patrickcrusade.org/wrongful.htm)



Gary Gauger , Illinois
Convicted 1993; Released 1996
Mr. Gauger was sentenced to death for the murder of his parents,
whose bodies were found after he reported them missing.
The prosecution's evidence came from detectives who interrogated
Mr. Gauger and claimed that he told them that he killed his parents during
a blackout. These detectives admitted that Mr. Gauger initially made this
statement in the context of telling the detectives that if they were telling
the truth about the evidence proving that he killed his parents (which they were not),
then he must have done it in a blackout because he knew nothing about it.
The detectives claimed that after making the statement in that
hypothetical way, Mr. Gauger then told them that he really did the crime.
Yet the only details ascribed to Mr. Gauger ended up being flatly
inconsistent with the facts of the crime. The prosecution also presented
a jailhouse informant who claimed to have heard Mr. Gauger make some incriminating statements. On appeal, the court reversed the conviction on
the ground that the entire interrogation was unconstitutional.
Mr. Gauger was not retried, however, because by this time the
United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had happened
across evidence (through a wiretap) showing that Mr. Gauger had nothing
to with the crime, which had been committed by two members of a motorcycle gang.
Eventually, a federal grand jury indicted these two gang members,
charging them with the murder for which Mr. Gauger had been sentenced to die.
(As an aside, the jailhouse informant has recently said that he will admit that
his testimony was fabricated if he is paid for an interview.)
(Provided by http://www.patrickcrusade.org/wrongful.htm)



Robert Hayes , Florida
Convicted 1991; Released 1997
Mr. Hayes was convicted of rape and murder and was
sentenced to death. The prosecution presented testimony
putting him with the victim, whom Mr. Hayes knew, at the
time that the prosecution contended the murder took place.
The prosecution also introduced DNA evidence that supposedly
linked Mr. Hayes to the crime. On appeal from the convictions,
a new trial was ordered because of faulty DNA analysis that
rendered it unreliable and contaminated. At the second trial,
evidence emerged that the victim was found clutching hairs
of a white man in her hands, evidence which was very exculpatory
of Mr. Hayes, who is African-American. Evidence also emerged
suggesting that another man may have committed the
murder--a man who had since been convicted of another rape.
The jury at the second trial acquitted Mr. Hayes of all charges.
(Provided by http://www.patrickcrusade.org/wrongful.htm)



David Keaton , Florida
Convicted 1971; Released 1973
Mr. Keaton was sentenced to death after having been convicted
of killing a police officer during an armed robbery. The case
against him was built on a confession, which Mr. Keaton
consistently maintained was a false confession that had been
coerced out of him through threats, lies and beatings. In the
aftermath of the trial, a close friend of the slain police officer
learned about some of the tactics that had been used to extract
confessions in the case: one of the suspects had been beaten
bloody and the police had slammed a door so hard on another
suspect's that the toe was severed. Moreover, it emerged that
the police had repeatedly shown pictures of the suspects to the
witnesses in order to prompt an identification. When the trial judge
learned of the attempts by police and prosecutors to suppress
exculpatory evidence, he ordered that all evidence be brought to
directly to court. Based on a review of the real facts,
the judge dismissed all charges against Mr. Keaton.
(Provided by http://www.patrickcrusade.org/wrongful.htm)