ON DEATH ROW DUE TO SUPPRESSED EVIDENCE

More than 20 years ago, a jury took only about an hour to convict James Floyd of murdering an 86-year-old woman in her home. They took another hour to send him to death row. The evidence seemed compelling. Police caught Floyd cashing the victim's stolen checks. A bloodied sock, a jailhouse snitch, tire tracks and some hairs also were presented at trial. But on Thursday, the Florida Supreme Court tossed out Floyd's conviction and death sentence because prosecutors didn't share other important evidence with defense attorneys. The ruling called the new evidence "unsettling."

That evidence included statements from a neighbor who claimed to see two other men entering the old woman's St. Petersburg house about the time of her death, as well as inconsistent reports from detectives and information about how the snitch tried to leverage his testimony for a lighter sentence on his own charges. "It's outrageous. It's important evidence," said Pam Izakowitz, Floyd's Tampa attorney. "It could exonerate Floyd. He didn't kill her."

Prosecutors are required to provide defense attorneys with copies of all documents and evidence that could be material to a case. It was unclear Thursday why the information was not provided to the defense. Doug Crow, one of Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe's top assistants, said the withholding of evidence most likely was an honest mistake. "I've been here 30 years, and our office has never operated that way," Crow said. McCabe said he didn't know if the state would bring Floyd to trial again.

The attorney who prosecuted Floyd at trial, Joseph Episcopo, also was the attorney who prosecuted Rudolph Holton, who was released from prison in 2003 after 16 years on death row for a murder he didn't commit. Episcopo, who is now in private practice in Tampa, was in New York on Thursday taping segments for Court TV and CNN, an assistant said. He could not be reached for comment.

Floyd's wife, Hannah, who married Floyd while he was on death row, said she cried for an hour after hearing the news Thursday morning. "I knew it was going to happen," she said. Martin McClain, a lawyer for 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.

St. Petersburg police arrested Floyd for the Jan. 16, 1984, murder of Annie Bar Anderson, who was known in her St. Petersburg neighborhood as the "Butterfly Lady." She raised Monarch butterflies on her back porch. Anderson had been stabbed 11 times in the stomach and once in the heart. Detectives developed Floyd, then 23, as a suspect when he tried to cash one of Anderson's stolen checks. Floyd gave conflicting statements at first and provided a false alibi. A sock spattered with blood - the same type as Anderson's - was found in Floyd's jacket pocket. Several hairs also were found on Anderson's bed. This was before the days of DNA testing, so all forensic experts could tell was that the hairs belonged to a black person. Floyd is black, Anderson white. Tire tracks found on a concrete slab in back of Anderson's home also were "similar" to the tires on Floyd's motorcycle, police said.

Floyd, who worked as a custodian for a local church, told police he had found Anderson's checks in a trash bin in an alley. He admitted forging them, but denied killing Anderson. After Floyd's arrest, a fellow inmate said Floyd told him that he had stabbed a white woman. The snitch, a white man, admitted in court that he didn't like black people.

In 1994, new defense attorneys got the full case file - and found the withheld evidence. Attorneys asked Luce for a hearing, but he refused. The Florida Supreme Court later ordered Luce to hold one. Attorneys presented the new evidence and asked Luce for a new trial. He refused. Years ticked by. The attorneys took the case to the Florida Supreme Court, which ordered a new trial for Floyd on Thursday. "There is little dispute that the state possessed exculpatory evidence that it failed to provide to Floyd," states the ruling........

"It is clear that the case against the defendant was not among the strongest we have encountered," the ruling states, later adding: "After collectively examining the evidence suppressed by the state, it is apparent that it could have provided a basis for reasonable doubt in the minds of some jurors. "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."

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SAVED BY A KID

"With no murder weapon and no body, a blood-stained tie became the key to putting a quietly-spoken Canadian behind bars for the murder of his estranged wife. But a simple explanation of how Susan Christie's blood came to be on Rory Kirk Christie's tie has now helped quash his 2003 conviction and a retrial has been ordered. On Thursday, the West Australian Court of Criminal Appeal ordered a retrial, finding there was fresh evidence about the tie and that the jury had been misdirected. In his written reasons, judge John McKechnie said the tie was the "only physical evidence capable of linking the appellant (Mr Christie) with the crime".

The prosecution had claimed that Mr Christie, then 32, was wearing the tie when he killed his 42-year-old wife. Mrs Christie disappeared in November 2001. Her body has never been found. During the sensational trial that led to Mr Christie's conviction and an 11-year jail term, prosecutor Troy Sweeney said the husband had motive to murder his wife because of the couple's disputes over the shared custody of their son, Fraser, now aged eight. And the prosecution rejected as a "complete fabrication" Mr Christie's explanation that the tie might have been stained when Mrs Christie's nose bled at Fraser's birthday party.

But a child witness has since sworn an affidavit that he saw Mr Christie at the birthday party and that he had been wearing a tie when he helped Mrs Christie with her bleeding nose. Judge McKechnie noted that Mr Christie's credibility had been attacked over his explanation. "There was a direct attack on the appellant's credibility on a vital issue in circumstances where, unbeknown it must be said to the prosecutor, there was evidence capable of supporting him on the issue," he said. "The absence of the evidence of (the child) deprived the jury of all of the facts and circumstances surrounding the deceased's blood on the ... tie."

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