The body on Simonton Street

Elijah "Saunders" didn't have any plans for Memorial Day.
He was still on his bicycle after pedaling all night around Key West as the sky began to lighten on May 31, 2010.
Saunders, whose real last name is being withheld, was one of scores of night wanderers of this city, one of the homeless men and women who bounce from one vagrant encampment or gathering place to another, seeing who was about and what was up.
As Saunders rode his bicycle across the parking lot behind First State Bank on Simonton Street, he saw his friend Tracy lying face down on the asphalt, her bicycle standing a few feet away. Stillness inhabits a dead body so thoroughly that the absence of life is apparent a hundred feet away. Saunders knew she was dead even before he saw the blood pooled around her head.
Tracy Leigh Heshmaty, 37, with three sisters and a mother in Georgia, was a homicide victim, and the killer was someone in the clan. Like Saunders and the battered woman he had just discovered, the murderer was a restless soul seeking satisfaction on a nighttime bicycle ride. Elijah called the Key West Police just after 6 a.m. and waited with his deceased friend for the law to arrive.
Once at Heshmaty's side, Detective Scott Standerwick and a crime scene investigator analyzed the murder scene. A large piece of coral rock stained with blood and tissue was just beyond the victim's head. CSI Donald Guevremont also photographed a bloody shoe print, left behind by someone wearing athletic shoes. If the victim had carried a purse, it was now nowhere to be found.
Saunders told Standerwick and another Key West Police detective, Frank Duponty,  that he had seen Heshmaty with a Hispanic male about two hours earlier at the all-night CVS store at Truman Avenue and Simonton Street. He described the man as thin with long, black hair parted in the middle. The man had been on a silver mountain bike and talking with the victim outside CVS, Saunders remembered.
Duponty drove the three or four blocks down Simonton Street from the murder scene to the CVS and watched the security video. As he watched video that had been shot around 4:30 a.m., the time Saunders said he'd last seen Heshmaty alive, he saw the suspect on the screen. With the night just outside the doors, the high-quality video captured Heshmaty entering the store. In the next few frames, a man on a silver bicycle rolls past the store's entrance in the dark parking lot. The man is thin, with black hair parted down the middle. A few frames later, the man walks into the store, looking to his right toward the beer coolers, the direction Heshmaty had just walked. Finally, the two are taped leaving the store together. Detectives now had a suspect.

'A cipher'

The thin man in the video is Pablo Solano Jimenez, a 29-year-old drifter from a small town outside Vera Cruz, Mexico. He has no history in the United States before making it to Key West. Jimenez was living in a mobile home across Simonton Street from the Gato Building at the time of the murder. His trailer is between the CVS and the murder scene several blocks up Simonton Street.

According to Mark Wilson, the assistant state attorney who prosecuted Jimenez last week, there is very little known about Jimenez. There is no family in Mexico asking about his well-being and there are no defense witnesses going  to bat for him, Wilson said.
"He is a cipher," Wilson said. "We know nothing much beyond the intersection of the two and how it ended. She is from Macon, Ga., and he came to Key West from Mexico. She was sleeping on friends' couches and he was staying with friends at a mobile home."

Heshmaty had been arrested for credit card theft and fraud in 2005; her last arrest was in 2009 for a probation violation, Monroe County Sheriff's Office records show. There was marijuana in her system at the time of her death, an autopsy showed.
There are no witnesses to the murder so the question of motive may never be answered. All police have is Jimenez's version of events.
A former resident of the trailer park said Heshmaty and other women would occasionally go to the trailer park to perform sex for money. The former resident said he saw Heshmaty, long before the night of her death, knock on the door of the trailer where Jimenez and his male roommates lived.
That adds the possibility that the two had been discussing a sexual liaison on the night of the murder, but doesn't answer what led to the attack that killed her.
When police found him on Duval Street at 3:45 that afternoon, Jimenez denied knowing anything about Heshmaty's murder. In fact, Jimenez later suggested that African-American men who had been outside CVS may have killed her. He also told detectives that one of his roommates had talked of murdering someone.

The following detective notes indicate that his story kept changing:

• He saw the victim at CVS around 4 a.m. as he was buying beer. "He and the victim had gone to his trailer, kissed and had sex. She said something about looking for her roommate Richard and she left and he never saw her again."
• Jimenez then told police the two had walked down Simonton to a corner near the murder scene, where she left him, still alive. He then told police he last saw her "at the corner of CVS."
• Jimenez said he went to CVS with the victim, but stayed outside. He said he was waiting by Simonton Street but when told about the video showing him in the store, he changed his statement, saying he had waited for Heshmaty by the shopping center's Truman Avenue exit.

It was a bicycle, the silver mountain bike, that brought Jimenez down to earth, police said. Jimenez gave detectives permission to search the trailer where he was staying. Police could not find the pants, shirt, or athletic shoes Jimenez had worn in the CVS video, but they did find a blood-stained, silver mountain bike in the trailer. When detective showed the blood on the bicycle to Jimenez, he told detectives he didn't know anything about the blood stains.
The next day, on June 1, detectives found the clothes and shoes Jimenez wore in the CVS video; the athletic shoes that matched the bloody footprint had been put in the trash can outside the trailer.

The question: Why?

When asked what happened, Jimenez told detectives:

 "He had stolen a car and found two packages of cocaine in the trunk. He hid the packages and later he shared the cocaine with Heshmaty. At one point she started to demand money in exchange for her not to tell the owners of the cocaine about him. He also was [inexplicably] assaulted a couple of times," detectives wrote. "The morning of the incident she told him the guys were in town and she wanted money. She mentioned her daughter and he hit her with the rock."

Because the Monroe County Medical Examiner had found no cocaine in Heshmaty's system, detectives did not buy Jimenez's statement that he killed her to protect himself from drug dealers.

As Jimenez sat in his cell at the Monroe Count Detention Center a few days after his June 1, 2010, arrest, detectives dropped by to ask follow-up questions. Here is the report they gave of that conversation.


"Jimenez did not remove any of her jewelry, only her purse and he threw it in the trash. He said his friends [in the trailer] were not involved and knew nothing about the incident. Jimenez said he never threw the rock. Only hit her while holding the rock. He did not remember his exact hand placement.
 Jimenez said he did not do drugs; [that he] only had five beers and he did not know why it happened. Jimenez said he went to Denny's after a beer and a cigarette. He bought coffee and nachos.

Jimenez said they did not have sex in the parking lot. He said he pushed her down and hit her and believes he hit her in the back first. Jimenez said they did not fight. She scratched him as he pushed her. He grabbed the rock after she fell down. She never yelled after he hit her only at first during verbal argument.
Jimenez said he was not sure why it happened but it may be over anger, vengeance, reaching a limit, or hate."



 --John L. Guerra

No proof that Key West sailors were irradiated

Several people have contacted me with concerns that Key West Navy personnel were among the crew of the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan exposed to radiation following Japan's tsunami in March 2011.
The Regan (CVN 76), a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered supercarrier, was deployed off the coast of Japan in the plume of radiation spewing from the Fukushima-Daichi nuclear power plant, the U.S. Navy said. The power plant had been hit by a tsunami generated by an earthquake off Japan's east coast.

Helicopter crews from the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan ferried supplies into the island nation and returned to the ship after passing through the plume, the Navy said.
One local said that at least 140 sailors had been treated for exposure in Key West; another put the number at about 50 sailors.
As to whether sailors from Key West were irradiated, that turns out to be false, the Navy said.
According to the ship's commander, Capt. Thom Burke, only 17 sailors, most of whom served on the helicopters, received low-level radiation. No one has taken ill from the exposure, he said.
"The levels that were detected were very low levels," Burke told 10News.com in San Diego, the Reagan's home port. "To put this in perspective, the maximum radiation dose received was equal to the amount of natural background radiation one would receive in one month from sources such as rocks, soil and the sun."
Generators designed to keep the power plant cooled during emergencies ceased working and the pumps that circulate coolant water in the reactor ceased to work, causing the reactors to begin to overheat. After full meltdown in three reactors, the Japanese shut down the plant by flooding the whole system with seawater.
No sailors from Key West were on the carrier, so there's no reason to worry about any Key West sailors when it comes to the Japan radiation, the Navy said.

The dogs of poor

Two recent national news items riled Key Westers who live on the edge of poverty. As everyone who lives here knows, it's incredibly expensive pay for an apartment here, much less pay a mortgage and raise kids. Key West, like other towns across America, has a suffering middle class.
So when it was reported on television networks that the 2008-2009 stock market collapse took 40 percent of Americans' savings, the news merely proved what we here have been feeling: that we got screwed. Those savings were in the form of 401K plans and other retirement plans. What happened was sinful: banking houses and investment firms took our savings and gambled them away without our permission. They had access to our money and they simply lost it on a whim, on a blue-sky investment idea, or in some scheme or other. If someone comes into your house, steals $500 from your dresser drawer and goes on a drinking spree,  the result is the same. A stranger used your savings for themselves.

The second news item was a televised Senate Banking Committee hearing at which the head of JP Morgan apologized to the American people for destroying Americans' nest eggs. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told Senate Banking Republicans that JPMorgan alone lost $2 billion of your money and those of millions of other Americans. He promised senators that JPMorgan would put a "risk committee" together to review what went wrong.

Meanwhile, JPMogan has yet to pay back billions in tax dollars (the money taken from your weekly paycheck) it received to keep the banking network afloat.
Here's a plan: I am going to go into a bunch of banks and steal all the money. Once banks start complaining, I'm going to put together a committee to determine what went wrong.

If the response of Republican senators on the banking committee this week is any guide, the banks I robbed would then hold me up as a model of honesty and American values.

Here's what Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), had to say about Dimon after Dimon explained that ONE guy in the JPMorgan London office blew $1.6 billion on ridiculous investments. (The guy's nickname is the "London Whale," by the way).

Corker, whose job it is to regulate bankers like JPMorgan, was unabashed in his sniveling, kneeling and pawing:
"You’re obviously renowned, rightfully so I think, as being one of the most, you know, one of the best CEOs in the country for financial institutions,” Corker swooned. “You missed this, it’s a blip on the radar screen.”

A blip? That's not what people who now have no money for retirement, much less healthcare, think of losing their money to some dude in some London office.

It made me and dozens of other Key Westers who caught the hearing ill and ashamed. Across the web, the exchange was seen as nothing less than an "ass-kissing" by Senate republicans who have no manhood.

Corker also asked Dimon how Congress can write legislation that makes it easier for banking firms to follow the rules. What he was really asking, it seems, was "How can we write rules that make it easier for you guys to not have to come here and explain?"

In my life as a critic, it's been easy to beat up on Republicans. To be fair, though, while Dimon gives Corker and other Republican banking committee members money for their campaigns, Democrats receive even more money from Dimon.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Dimon and his wife, Judy, have donated more than a half-million dollars to Democratic candidates and committees since 1989. That is nearly 12 times what the couple has given the GOP.

Vice President Joe Biden ($2,000), Sen. Chris Dodd ($5,300), Sen. Tom Carper ($8,000), Sen. Charles Schumer ($12,000) and Rep. Charles Rangel ($4,500) have all received Dimon dollars. Former Vice President Al Gore received $4,000 from the Dimons in 1999. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) has hauled in $7,000 from them over his career.

What this means is old news, unfortunately. Forget party affiliation; it doesn't exist. Nearly everyone up on Capitol Hill is for sale. They play fast and loose with our retirement, our futures. It's disgusting and at least the Republicans are up front about selling their souls to the rich and megapowerful.

Ambulances don't fit in new firehouse

By John L. Guerra

Conch Key Volunteer Fire Rescue proudly protects 4,500 people living in a 15-square mile area in the Middle Keys. The department consists of paid and volunteer firefighters and emergency medical technicians.

Too bad the openings for the ambulances and firetrucks in a new hurricane-poof building are too short for the vehicles to park inside.
The fire department in January was in the midst of building a new hurricane-strength bunker in which  to park its firefighting equipment when one of the construction workers noticed the doorways were only nine feet high. Ambulances are at least 10 feet tall and won't fit inside the planned bays, emails between county officials show.
I have a contact at the work site who has managed large construction jobs, including spanning bridges over rivers, pouring new concrete for power plant cooling towers, and building hundreds of commercial and government buildings.
He said he just wants the firehouse at Conch Key to be built correctly. He has read the blueprints as he took part in the construction.
"The mistake caused construction to stop for a couple of months," said my source, who showed me emails between the construction company and county engineers discussing in the problem. In one email, an architect associated with the job suggested low-cost solutions: removing the air conditioning units on the roofs of the ambulances to make them short enough to fit or relocating shorter ambulances from other Keys firehouses to the Conch Key building. Because those ideas aren't plausible, work was halted in March, my source says, so the construction problem could be engineered. That also meant the job had to be rebid to take into account the cost of the extra concrete needed to fix the problem.
Engineers and construction workers restarted work about two weeks ago, my source says. Until it's finished, the firetrucks and ambulance are parked outside and the emergency workers live in a house trailer, my source says.
To fix the too-short entrance ways, the builders will have to lengthen concrete support pilings that already have been built. In other words, they'll have to splice vertical iron rods through the top of the support columns and then pour more cement to make the support columns taller.
"It is going to cost the county hundreds of thousands of dollars at least," my source told me.
My source said there are other problems with the new station's design, including the fact that fire trucks wouldn't be able to back all the way in to the station, even if they could fit under the doorways.
"There is a work space on the inside back wall that makes the station too short horizontally, too," he told me.
These seem like giant oversights by someone, either by the architect or by engineers. How could such a simple miscalculation occur?
Not only that, the owner of a lobster trap yard next door to the firehouse has threatened to sue the county to stop the relocation of a power generator near his property.  The generator is designed to provide power should hurricane winds knock out electricity to the station. Without the new generator, the communications equipment on Conch Key will be useless after the power goes out. One need only remember the 1935 hurricane to remember how it all could end if help isn't found fast once a storm passes.
Not to mention communicating with firehouse equipment and EMTs in the field who need to radio vital information to emergency managers.
The cement pad upon which the generator is to be built is to be surrounded by a fence that should keep the generator's noise from disturbing neighbors. If the lobster trap owner next door convinces a judge to halt the project, that could lead to new delays, my source said.
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Death-row inmate innocent?
Not so fast, prosecutor says

By John L. Guerra
_____________________________________________________________________

Thomas Overton, a former Keys resident who now lives on Florida’s death row is innocent, the victim of mishandled DNA evidence, Overton's lawyer said last week.

On Wednesday, Monroe County State Attorney Mark Wilson said he has no doubt that Overton murdered a man and his pregnant wife after torturing them for hours in their own home.

"The DNA test showed 12 loci matched," Wilson said, explaining that a dozen points [loci] on a DNA strand taken from the crime scene matched the same 12 points on the DNA sample taken from Overton in 1996.
Overton was convicted of the August 1991 murders of Michael and Michelle MacIvor of Tavernier. Ms. MacIvor was eight months pregnant when Overton raped and murdered her.

"Unless Overton can come up with a non-criminal reason for being in the MacIvor home," he killed the couple and their unborn baby, Wilson said.

Overton's lawyer, Roseanne Eckert, said semen found on a comforter under Michelle MacIvor was not DNA tested until five years after the crime. In June 1993, the bedding samples were sent to FDLE for DNA testing. No match was found at that time.

Overton found in 1996 

Then, after Overton's 1996 burglary arrest, prison officials obtained Overton's blood when he cut his throat in an attempt to commit suicide. After testing Overton's DNA, serologists claimed a trillion to one result, which means that even with several Earths full of people, Overton would still be the perpetrator.

Eckert, however, says the evidence was mishandled.

"Doc" Donald Pope, a veterinarian-turned crime scene investigator and serologist for the Monroe County Sheriff's Office, swabbed Michelle's body at the scene and during autopsy. Pope testified that he found no evidence of sperm in the swabs he took from the victim's body.
"He then opined that he believed the absence of any evidence of sperm on the swabs taken from the victim's body was probably the result of deterioration due to weather and climate conditions," Eckert argued.
Pope also admitted during cross examination to having failed to properly collect and label the swabs in question. He also said dating on the samples did not accurately reflect the date on which the samples were obtained. The swabs also were lost and could not be found for a time, Eckert said.

 A bizarre twist 

The case took a bizarre turn in the time before Eckert became Overton's lawyer. Overton's earlier lawyer accused Monroe County Sheriff’s detectives of taking a violent inmate to the former La Concha Holiday Inn on Duval Street and plying him with drinks and confiscated drugs to convince him to testify against Overton.

The inmate, who called himself “James Pesci,” was a fan of Joe Pesci, the actor who plays psychopath mobsters. "James Pesci" inhabited a cell next to Overton after Overton's 1996 arrest. Pesci told jail officials that Overton had told him how he had murdered the MacIvors--including feeling the baby move as he sexually assaulted Ms. MacIvor.

Prosecutors wanted to put Pesci on the stand to recount the confession to a jury, but at one point, according to a motion from Overton's lawyers to prevent Overton's confession from being heard by a jury, Pesci balked at testifying.

To convince Pesci to testify, the motion states, detectives provided Pesci with prostitutes, alcohol, and drugs. Overton’s lawyer at the time claimed a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigator took Pesci from his jail cell in shackles and drove him to Key West where he bought him drinks at the La Concha. The FDLE investigator even went so far as to put his sports coat over Pesci’s shoulders so other bar patrons wouldn't notice Pesci's jail uniform, the motion said.

After “Pesci” had a few drinks, he was serviced by a prostitute in a hotel room upstairs as a detective stood outside the door in the hallway, the motion claimed.

On a second occasion, the motion claimed, detectives brought Pesci to Key West again, this time to meet a prostitute behind a local business. As an investigator stood outside a car, Pesci received services from a prostitute. Detectives also allegedly gave Pesci drugs police had confiscated from local drug defendants, the motion claimed.

Wilson: Pesci himself denied the story

When the motion was filed, the story of Pesci's Nights Out raised a lot of eyebrows, not to mention piqued the interest of the court. Wilson got to cross examine Pesci as well as a defense investigator who claimed Pesci could describe the hotel ballroom in the La Concha.

"Pesci himself said the story [about the trips to Key West] was false," Wilson said. "He recanted the entire story of his trips."

Pesci also got to testify what he said Overton had told him of his crime, including that Overton had first spotted Ms. MacIvor as she bought gas at the Amoco Station in Tavernier where Overton worked.

"Overton told Pesci details that only the perpetrator would know of the crime," Wilson said.

As for the defense assertion that a .22 pistol had been fired at the crime scene and that Overton did not own a gun, Wilson said the DNA match was more than enough proof that Overton is the killer.

The same goes for tire tracks that defense lawyers say don't match the treads on Overton's car, Wilson said.

"We have Overton's DNA under the body of Michelle MacIvor," he said.

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Death Row Lawyer: Evidence Points Away
from Man Convicted of Tavernier Slayings


By John L. Guerra
______________________________________________________

The stoic face below is that of Thomas Mitchell Overton, a death row inmate who, a jury ruled, killed a young man and his pregnant wife in Tavernier in August 1991.

Could it be true that he is innocent, that the jailhouse confession used to convict him never occurred?

I recently had lunch with Roseanne Eckert, the attorney representing Overton, and she outlined facts that she said may exonerate Overton. Eckert, a wife and mother herself, is a lawyer with the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel-South, a state-funded organization that represents death row inmates in their post-conviction proceedings. Eckert had flown down to Key West last month to ask Circuit Court Judge Mark Jones to compel the state to test all the swabs from a rape kit used to collect forensic evidence from the body of Michelle MacIvor. Jones is to rule on that request in the near future.

Cartels ruled out; gas station worker ruled in

In August 1991, someone entered the home of Michael and Michelle MacIvor and spent a long time torturing and slaughtering them. Michelle MacIvor was eight months pregnant, but according to detectives, that didn't stop Overton from binding her ankles and wrists, taping her eyes shut, and raping her. Overton then strangled her and left the house. Detectives collected semen from the bed in the master bedroom where Michelle had been found.
Michael MacIvor was on the floor in the living room, also dead at the hands of Overton, detectives contend.
Upon learning that Michael MacIvor bought and sold small aircraft in Central America and the Caribbean, detectives for a time suspected that the murders may have been related to drug trafficking. Because cartels at the time used small airplanes to smuggle drugs to South Florida and the Keys, the presence of a dirt airstrip next to the MacIvor home made a compelling case for that scenario. Had enforcers for a drug cartel flown in and exacted "justice" on Michael for a botched drug deal?
Detectives thought not; Michelle MacIvor, a Monroe County public school teacher, seemed to be the focus of the attack, not her husband. Not only that, but interviews with business contacts showed that Michael was an honest, hard-working aircraft mechanic who successfully bought, repaired, and sold aircraft. The registrations and histories of each aircraft he'd possessed were clean.

Overton was known to detectives

Monroe County detectives, however, also knew Overton at the time of the murders. Though he'd never been charged for it, detectives believed he was a strong suspect in the earlier murder of another woman named Rachel Surrette. Overton also was in Tavernier in 1991, working down the road at an Amoco station at the time of the MacIvor murders. He was not arrested for the killings that year, but five years later detectives got the chance to link him to the MacIvor crime.
When Overton was caught during a burglary in 1996, Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents asked him for a blood sample. He refused. But when Overton cut his throat in custody, jail officials handed FDLE agents bloody towels that had been used by doctors to stop the bleeding. FDLE agents then  performed a DNA test and determined Overton's DNA matched that found on a comforter under Michelle MacIvor's body. In 1998, the samples were submitted to another lab for a different DNA test. That comparison produced a match with the probability of one in four trillion.
To make matters worse for Overton, another inmate in his cellblock--a convicted rapist who calls himself "Joe Pesci" after the actor who portrays psychopathic mobsters--testified in court that Overton had described the murders to him in sordid detail, including being able to feel the baby move as he raped Michelle MacIvor.
Overton was convicted and given two death sentences.

Where the case breaks down

The DNA evidence was mishandled, Eckert claims, and should not have been admitted into evidence. Without the DNA, any assertion that Overton was ever in the MacIvor home is suspect. The semen and other body fluids collected from the crime scene degraded in the Keys heat before it was even collected, Eckert says. She wants all the swabs from the crime scene and the autopsy tested to determine if someone else comitted the crime.
"Many people have been exonerated based on DNA evidence, but it can work both ways," Eckert said. "DNA can make detectives believe they have their suspect so they stop looking to see if there were other perpetrators. They also stop looking to see if other evidence leads away from a suspect."
By having all the swabs tested, Eckertwants to prove Overton wasn't there and show the presence of other criminals, the real killers.
"We want either to prove his innocence or get a reduction of sentence for Mr. Overton," Eckert told me. "Even the juries had a residual doubt as to his guilt. For the murder of Michelle, they voted 9-3 to give him death. For the murder of Michael they voted 8-4 for death. Not all the jurors were convinced."

Eckert outlined why she believes Overton got a raw deal.
First, the semen found on the bedding was not DNA tested until two years after the crime. In June 1993, the bedding samples were sent to FDLE for DNA testing. No match was found at that time. After Overton's 1996 burglary arrest, prison officials obtained Overton's blood during the suicide attempt, and only then could serologists claim a match.
"Doc" Donald Pope, a veterinarian-turned crime scene investigator and serologist for the Monroe County Sheriff's Office, swabbed Michelle's body at the scene and during autopsy. Pope testified that he found no evidence of sperm in the swabs he took from the victim's body.
"He then opined that he believed the absence of any evidence of sperm on the swabs taken from the victim's body was probably the result of deterioration due to weather and climate conditions," Eckerdt argues.
Pope also admitted during cross examination to having failed to properly collect and label the swabs in question. He also said dating on the samples did not accurately reflect the date on which the samples were obtained. The swabs also were lost and could not be found for a time, Eckert said. With a broken chain of custody, there is no way to determine whether police obtained DNA from the suspect first, then attached it to items from the crime scene.
Eckert doesn't claim that happened, but doubtful jurors can prevent executions.

Snitch is suspect character

The "Joe Pesci" snitch is a pathological liar, Eckert said. Psychiatrists testified in court that Pesci had a history of psychopathic behavior, including lying repeatedly about things for which he had no reason to lie. Not only that, but Pesci was a convicted rapist who was in jail for sexual violence against a young woman who had already consented to sex.
Pesci signed a sworn statement that allegedly repeated what Overton had confessed to Pesci about the MacIvor murders. According to Eckert, Pesci misspelled the same words detectives misspelled in the report they wrote on the day of the murders. The idea is that detectives simply handed Pesci their reports so Pesci could write an "Overton confession" that would include details only the killer or detectives would know.
Other facts that raise doubt as to Overton's guilt, Eckert says:

• Tire tracks found outside the MacIvor home don't match the vehicle Overton owned.
• Overton had a full-time girlfriend, therefore showed he was capable of healthy relationships.
• A .22 casing and spent bullet were found at the crime scene. Overton does not own a gun.
• A woman came forward a few years ago who said her next-door neighbor, a private investigator, had been paid to spy on the MacIvors in the weeks before the killing. The woman said she had typed up notes from the private investigator's reconnaissance trips to the MacIvoyr's homes for several weeks before the killings. The P.I. had been to Tavernier on a spying trip the weekend of the killings, the woman told newspapers and radio stations. After the MacIvor killings became news, the man left town, the woman claimed. The "P.I." was eventually tracked down and denied any knowledge of investigative work or other claims made by the woman.

It can be said that if you don't have an alibi, attack the evidence. DNA has become a regular point of attack for defense or appellate attorneys trying to save their clients' lives. The Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, co-founded by OJ Simpson defense lawyer Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, has successfully used DNA to prove the innocence of condemned men.
According to another organization that seeks to exonerate death row inmates, 140 condemned men have been exonerated since the 1970s. Unfortunately, some of these men were executed before their innocence could be proved.
Whether one believes Overton belongs on death row or not, lawyers like Eckert provide a chance for those the public condemned a long time ago. It's easy to like this woman's spirit but for her it is no game. It is not a public service. She is trying to save a life she believes is innocent.

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Please contact me with any story ideas or thoughts. I am at johnlguerra@gmail.com or 305-731-6727. You also can try the comment link on this page.

Should Griffiths get another term?

That seems to be The Question as candidates for the Monroe County School Board start raising campaign contributions and organize to run for the $29,000+ a year job.

Andy Griffiths, the owner of a small fleet of charter fishing boats and the senior member of the School Board, is running again. He is in his 20th year representing District 2, which comprises the upper half of Key West and Stock Island.
Griffiths was campaigning hard at the recent Taste of the Town in front of the U.S.S. Mohawk at the Truman waterfront, working the crowd, laughing and talking with prospective voters.

Asleep at the wheel?

With Duncan Matthewson (District 3, Big Pine Key and environs) not running in 2012, Griffiths is the sole remaining board member (Board member John Dick was new in 2006), who was around before the School Board awoke and went after a culture of corruption and inside contractual deals. In 2008, Griffiths was fond of saying that the first revelations of employee credit card abuse and subsequent news coverage was overblown, thereby irritating some on the board and in the public who believed Griffiths had had his head in the sand during his previous years on the board. For 16 years, his opponents reason, Griffiths and other previous board members had been asleep at the wheel while employees raided public school funds to enrich themselves or to help friends get lucrative school construction and service contracts.

Nor did Griffiths help himself much when he repeatedly said it was not the board's role to "micromanage" the district's daily operations. That role, he reasoned, belonged to the superintendent. The board should take a 10,000-foot view, Griffiths argued, by concentrating on classroom content, ensuring teachers and students had the funds to succeed, and other broad policy tasks.

Griffiths also got himself in a little warm-ish water with the state Auditor General's Office when he made arrangements for the school district to transfer two certificates of deposit from First State Bank to the Monroe County Teachers Federal Credit Union's accounts.
There was no crime, just that Griffiths made the arrangement with the president of the credit union at a party where the two were chatting. It was the kind of quiet arrangement made all the time during the good old days when financial agreements were made outside School Board meetings.
Griffiths went to then-Superintendent Randy Acevedo to sign off on the transfer so the money could be moved. At the time, Griffiths argued that it made sense for school money to be in the Teachers Credit Union, which makes house and car loans to teachers.
The auditor general "tsk-tsk-ed" Griffiths' inappropriate banking in its annual audit findings for the district.

Doing his duty

Griffiths also isn't what one considers a reformer, though to be fair, he didn't wait long to take the board lawyer's evidence of Monique Acevedo's illegal credit card purchases straight to the Monroe County State Attorney's Office. In spite of State Attorney Dennis Ward's grumbling that Griffith didn't bring him much, Griffiths took Ward enough evidence to launch an investigation.
"I took all of the invoices that the [school system] finance director put together for me," Griffiths said last week. "I think it weighed about five pounds."
Griffiths did not win a lot of hearts and minds during the shake up that saw Superintendent Acevedo removed by the governor and heated debate over the demotion, resignation or firing of school administrators.
 After it was learned that Monique Acevedo would plead guilty to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from school accounts (including stealing fundraising money from her daughter's class), Ward sent each board member a letter asking each to recommend punishment for the former administrator and wife of the superintendent. While two recommended jail and two left it up to the State Attorney's Office, Griffiths told a reporter that Monique Acevedo should get house arrest.
"That would allow her to work and pay restitution, Griffiths said last week. "I was not sure how she could earn money in jail to pay us back."
His suggestion of house arrest didn't please the public, which felt a strong message against theft was needed for students to grasp and hold on to. Ms. Acevedo was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Many voters perceived Griffiths' reticence to get to the bottom of things as an attempt  to keep a lid on the truth. I am not sure I agree.  I believe "corrupt" has no place in describing Griffiths. His colleagues on the board may question his approach, but they trust him.
For Griffiths, it's about convenience. It's inconvenient to publicly debate in detail what's wrong. It's inconvenient for individual administrators to be criticized. It's inconvenient when board members are surprised by other board members' comments in the press.
There is much to like about Griffiths, though. He is a friendly, approachable board member and pays attention to what's going on in his district and grasps issues quickly. He breaks down the budget with skill during board debate and enjoys using parables and other illustrations to make a point.
Griffiths has good connections in Tallahassee and has the time and energy to devote himself to the board.

Griffiths said he wants voters to remember that he was board chairman as the district faced its biggest crisis in a generation.
"I was the chair during this most challenging time and sat between different factions going about the scandal in their own way," he told me. "I had to bring compromise and balance. Former School Board member Steve Pribramsky [and often Griffiths' adversary on the board] would go on to say in the press that I was the best person in that role at that time."
It's too early to tell, however, whether he's the best person to continue representing the parents and students of District 2. The public has to hear more from his opponents as the campaigning takes off in the next couple of months.
Two candidates, Howard Hubbard and Yvette Mira-Talbott, are running against Griffiths on Nov. 6. Griffiths has listed himself as his sole donor so far, giving himself $1,000. Neither Hubbard nor Mira-Talbott have listed any contributions; those will show up on the next campaign reports. That will tell us who is backing which candidate. Griffiths is epected to lose some long-term supporters to Mira-Talbott, who has deep roots in the Conch community.
But it's important that voters choose the best candidate, regardless of Griffiths' decisions during the financial scandals. If Griffiths shows the best understanding of the issues and can show he has a platform that will improve the district's mission to increase student performance, then voters should choose him.
"Speaking about unpopular decisions of the past is no substitute for putting forth future solutions," Griffiths wrote in a United Teachers of Monroe candidate questionnaire recently.

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My phone number is 305-731-6727. You can email me at johnlguerra@gmail.com.

Death in the Cretaceous

Jim Ketchum's first sensation after arriving was the smell of rotting vegetation. The air was so thick with it that the stink clung to his skin. Tropical heat filled his lungs each time he took in air.

Over-sized insects, heavy with waste and other food, flitted this way and that, buzzing and thrumming with odd little wings. Foot-long dragonflies zigged and zagged above the grass, grabbing prey out of the air.
Ketchum recognized them as Protolindenia wittei, the ancestors of the large dragonflies that fed along creeks on his Virginia mountain property back home. In the future.

Ketchum had ridden "The Lightning"--the nickname for the time machine his science group had designed--all the way to the Cretaceous period. It was Saturday back at the other end, mid-morning. Here it was a nameless morning on an Earth without human beings. The earliest proto-humans, 3-foot-tall Homo gautengensis--would not emerge from the tree lines of southern Africa for another 66 million years. Seventy thousand centuries lay between him and the weekend he left behind not more than 15 minutes ago.

And now here he was, a mid-level government scientist with a family and two cars in his garage. He had materialized just outside a dark forest at the top of a gently sloping plain, which he now scanned with his binoculars. Midway across the plain, a silver river meandered beneath tall pines and acacia along its banks. A hundred miles away, the horizon rose tens of thousands of feet into a series of jagged peaks. The range marched southwest, a line of volcanic plumes at the limits of his sight.

The atmosphere at this point of the earth's geologic history was 15 percent carbon dioxide, much thicker than the 7 percent carbon dioxide back home. The rich oxygen content enabled the creatures of the Cretaceous age to achieve gigantism, a thought that unsettled Ketchum and reminded him to stay alert. The rich air had other consequences, one of which was quite beautiful. The Cretaceous sky was a much deeper blue, almost cobalt, so the landscape was striking in its contrast. The rich air also made it harder for Ketchum to breathe. It would take some time for his body to adjust, but his training had prepared him to conserve energy until he felt better.

High-pitched animal calls boomed deep in the forest behind him. The calls, a series of hooting barks, had authority, power, and intent.

Ketchum froze. He faced forward, but his hearing was tuned to the towering canopy and dark forest floor behind him. He thought of his former colleague, Jeff Brister, who had battled a sub-adult pterosaur on a cliff in southern China before falling to his death. Ketchum's bladder urged him to flee, but after some minutes of silent prayer (God, too, was 70 million years in the future) he turned slowly, pivoting on the balls of his feet, ready to make a run for it.

He scanned the base of the trees for movement. The tightly-packed conifers rose some two hundred feet in straight columns. Sunlight barely pierced the canopy of trees, so Ketchum had to wait for his eyes to adjust.

He saw one of the trees lift from the soil and noted with confusion that it had no roots.

Something blocked the sun, then enveloped him from the top of his head to his waist. He was lifted into a stinking, wet darkness; then his legs dropped away. As he died, Ketchum realized with horror that he had materialized under the shadow of a large carnivore, probably a tyrannosaur.
The scientist had died on the wrong side of a Saturday morning, delivered like a pizza to a hungry dinosaur.