The Florida Supreme Court has vacated James Floyd’s 1985 conviction and death sentence, ruling that critical evidence was withheld by the prosecution and that the evidence might have been enough to change the verdict at trial. In its 4-2 decision, the Court ruled that the prosecutor’s failure to inform Floyd’s defense counsel that an eyewitness had seen two white men entering the victim’s home on the day of the murder and saw them leave in a suspicious manner approximately one hour later “severely compromised Floyds’ constitutional right to a fair trial.” The ruling noted that the state’s case against Floyd, who is black, was based mainly on circumstantial evidence, and included no eyewitness, fingerprint or DNA evidence linking him to the murder. “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. 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,” the court wrote. Bernie McCabe, the state attorney in Pinellas County, said he didn’t know if the state would attempt to bring Floyd to trial again.

(Associated Press, March 24, 2005). See Innocence.