Wilton Dedge’s Story
On January 23, 1984, Clarence Zacke and Wilton Dedge were placed in a prison transport van together. They were the only two inmates in the van. Dedge was awaiting a bond proceeding and a retrial for the 1981 rape of a 17-year-old Florida woman. Zacke, in prison for murder and conspiracy to commit murder, was a jailhouse snitch. A little over a week after their time together in the transport van, Zacke testified at Dedge’s bond proceedings. He claimed that Dedge had confessed the crime to him, calling the victim ‘an old hog’, and saying that he would kill her if he ever got out of prison. Dedge was denied bond. While his sentence from the first trial was 30 years, at his retrial he was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences plus two consecutive 15 year sentences. The conviction and increased sentence were due in large part to Zacke’s testimony.
The Trials
On December 8, 1981, around 4:30 p.m., a 17-year-old woman was repeatedly raped and assaulted in her home in Canaveral Groves, Florida. A month later, on January 8, 1982, Wilton Dedge was arrested based on the victim’s identification, which had wavered substantially in the month since the crime.
Dedge was first tried for burglary, sexual battery, and aggravated battery in 1982. The prosecution relied heavily on the victim’s identification, scent identification from a police dog and analysis of a hair found at the crime scene. The Florida jury took four hours and 25 minutes to convict Dedge of burglary with assault, sexual battery with a weapon, and aggravated battery. On December 22, 1983, however, the Fifth District Court of Appeals reversed Dedge’s conviction, finding that while the scent identification was persuasive, the trial judge had erred in disallowing the defense to present the testimony of an expert on human scent discrimination and in allowing hearsay during the examination of the prosecution’s expert witness. Because the eyewitness testimony was equivocal and the forensic evidence inconclusive, the Court of Appeals found these errors to be harmful.
Dedge was convicted a second time in August of 1984 based on questionable eyewitness identification, snitch testimony, limited forensic hair comparison, and dog sniffing evidence from a since-discredited handler.
The Jailhouse Snitch
Prosecutors relied heavily on testimony of prison inmate Zacke at Dedge’s second trial in 1984. Based on Zacke’s testimony, the open-ended forensic hair analysis, and the victim’s identification, Dedge was convicted a second time of burglary with assault, sexual battery with a weapon, and aggravated battery. This conviction was affirmed on appeal. Assistant State Attorney Chris White, who prosecuted the case, noted that Zacke wasn’t promised anything specifically in exchange for his testimony. Still, Zacke received a reduction in his sentence after testifying against Dedge.
Notably, the testimony against Dedge was not the first time Zacke had come forward with information to help an investigation. He had previously testified against convicted serial killer Gerald Stano, claiming that Stano had confessed to murdering Cathy Lee Schraf. Following conviction for the Schraf murder, Stano was sentenced to death. Zacke later recanted this testimony during a phone interview with a freelance writer. Zacke had over a century shaved off of his original 180 year sentence. He later admitted that he had been hoping to receive parole by testifying against Dedge. On November 11, 1989, a hearing examiner requested a 26 year reduction of Zacke’s sentence in return for Zacke’s alleged cooperation in providing authorities with information about a potential prison escape. Assistant State Attorney Chris White and Assistant State Attorney Michael Hunt both spoke at the hearing, calling Zacke a liar and a con artist (incidentally, their statements at the hearing were never shared with Dedge’s defense attorney).
The culmination of Zacke’s snitch testimonies allowed him to negotiate his sentence to 60 years or less with good behavior. But Zacke was ultimately unsuccessful in parlaying his snitch testimony into an early release. On December 21, 2005, jurors convicted Zacke of raping his adopted daughter over a multi-year period in the 1970s after deliberating for only two and a half hours. He was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences. The victim came forward publicly accusing him of rape upon learning of his impending release. In 2006, attorneys for Wilton Dedge called for an investigation after discovering that Florida authorities had prior knowledge of these allegations against Zacke, and that they may have hidden the allegations in order to secure Dedge’s conviction.
The Long Road to Exoneration
Throughout the course of his trials and appeals, Dedge continually proclaimed his innocence. At the time of his original and second trials, however, DNA testing was not available. In fact, DNA testing was not used in commercial laboratories until 1987. Florida courts first used DNA analysis in October of 1988, and it wasn’t until 1990 that federal courts authorized its use.
On March 30, 1988, Dedge’s attorney first wrote the State Attorney seeking DNA testing. Though the State Attorney had the authority to grant the request for DNA testing, he advised Dedge’s attorney to file a motion with the court. Dedge’s attorney subsequently verified that the state attorney’s office was maintaining the forensic evidence from the crime scene so that testing could be performed. During this same time, Dedge himself was inquiring into different possibilities of exoneration. He tried to show that Zacke had lied, the eyewitness identification had been contradictory, and that the prosecution had misused the hair analysis. He also contacted DNA testing services, including advocacy groups, to seek help in getting tested.
On October 17, 1994, Dedge contacted attorneys at the Innocence Project after seeing a television report about their work in post-conviction DNA testing. Less than two months later, the Innocence Project decided to take Dedge’s case. When the Innocence Project contacted the State Attorney’s office seeking release of certain evidence, the Assistant State Attorney requested that they obtain a court order. Though they could hardly know this at the time, following this initial opposition by the state, Dedge and his attorneys would face ten more years of appeals before finally winning release.
On April 24, 1997, the Innocence Project filed the first motion for DNA testing. The State Attorney’s office opposed this motion, claiming that the statute of limitations had passed despite the fact that the state had received the first request for DNA from Dedge’s attorney in 1988. The trial court agreed with the state, and denied the motion for DNA testing. After multiple appeals, the court ordered the release of certain evidence for DNA testing and, in March of 2001, Dedge motioned to vacate his conviction based on determinative proof of his innocence.
Later that spring, the legislature passed a new statute that allowed for post-conviction DNA testing. In November of that year, Dedge returned to court, filing yet another motion to vacate the judgment against him. The state argued that his conviction rested upon more than forensic evidence, relying on the snitch testimony and the dog scent lineup. According to the prosecutors, any of this evidence would have been sufficient to convict Dedge; thus, the exculpatory DNA evidence should not be determinative in the case. After an initial hearing in which Dedge’s motion to vacate his sentence was denied, the Florida Fifth District Court of Appeal affirmed without prejudice, allowing Dedge to file under the newly passed post-conviction DNA statute. Dedge’s attorneys filed a new motion under this statute, and on April 27, 2004, a new trial was ordered. Later that same year, after 22 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit, and after years of arduous appeals and disappointments, Dedge at last won his freedom. He was released on August 12, 2004.
On June 23, 2003, Governor Jeb Bush signed legislation, inspired in part by Dedge’s case, which extended prisoners’ rights to DNA testing that could exonerate them by removing any deadline for seeking evidence to prove innocence. The law also mandates that evidence collected at the time of the crime must be preserved until an inmate’s sentence is completed.
On December 14, 2005, the state of Florida awarded Dedge a $2 million settlement for his 22 year ordeal. Dedge was the first Florida inmate exonerated by DNA testing to receive compensation from the state. In 2006, attorneys for Wilton Dedge called for an investigation after discovering that the Florida authorities had prior knowledge of the allegations against Zacke, and may have hidden the information in order to secure Dedge’s conviction.
