Man Jailed for rapes cleared 26 years later..

[nexusgroove]

Poor Guy,

Locked up for 26 years for crimes he didn't do.

That must be hard on the mind how do you react to this news if you were the guy locked up and the come 26 years later and told sorry, u going home..

this man is now 67 years old, almost nothing left to live.

[funketeer]

Poor Guy,

Locked up for 26 years for crimes he didn't do.

this man is now 67 years old, almost nothing left to live.

Colonel Harland Sanders actively began franchising his chicken business at the age of 65, a quick service restaurant pioneer, has become a symbol of entrepreneurial spirit.

More than a billion of the Colonel's "finger lickin' good" chicken dinners are served annually.

Who knows? Maybe he goes on to become the next Colonel Sanders...

[stymie]

My friends unlce was in jail for 35 years for a murder he didnt commit. A police officer actually committed the murder and 35 years later other officers involved came forward. The guy didnt even get to see his kids grow up... whole life gone. The cop that did it and the other officers involved are not even in jail.

[nexusgroove]

Posted on Wed, Aug. 03, 2005 Miami Herald

R E L A T E D C O N T E N T

PATRICK FARRELL/HERALD STAFF FREEDOM NEAR: Luis Diaz, 67, accused of being the Bird Road Rapist that attacked at least 25 women from 1977 to 1979, is set to be released today after 26 years due to new DNA evidence and victims' recantations. More photos function showResults(siteSurveyKey) { var url="/mld/templates/contentModules/poll-results-popup.jsp"+ "?siteSurveyKey=" + siteSurveyKey; window.open(url, 'Title'); } function getSite(){ foundSite = false; site=document.location.hostname; endPos=site.indexOf(".com"); if (endPos>= 1) { foundSite = true; site = site.substr(0, endPos); startPos = site.lastIndexOf("."); site = site.substr(startPos + 1); } return site; } function getPublication(){ publication=document.location.pathname; startPos=publication.indexOf("/mld/"); publication=publication.substr(startPos+5); endPos=publication.indexOf("/"); publication=publication.substr(0,endPos); return publication; } function openSlideshow(url,width,height) { y=Math.floor((screen.availHeight-height)/2); x=Math.floor((screen.width-width)/2); window.open(url,'slideshow','width='+width+',height='+height+',top='+y+',left='+x+',scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes').focus(); } function openWin(URL,WIDTH,HEIGHT) {if (typeof WIDTH == 'undefined') { WIDTH = 500; } if (typeof HEIGHT == 'undefined') { HEIGHT = 400; } WIDTH = WIDTH + 200; HEIGHT = HEIGHT + 250;var Win_Param = 'width='+WIDTH+',height='+HEIGHT+',resizable=yes,scrollbars=yes'; aWindow = window.open(URL, 'thewindow',Win_Param); } R E L A T E D L I N K S • Woman doubted that police had the right man • About the Innocence Project

BIRD ROAD RAPES

Man jailed for rapes cleared 26 years later

The nightmare began, Jose Diaz said, only after he was awakened by Miami-Dade cops breaking down his family's front door to arrest his father in his pajamas.

'They told me, `We're taking your dad in because he's the Bird Road Rapist,' '' recalled Diaz, who was 14 on that August night in 1979.

The family's agony is about to end. Luis Diaz, a Cuban American who served 26 years in prison for seven rape and attempted rape convictions, is expected to be released from prison today. The reasons: eyewitness recantations by two victims and new DNA evidence that has cast doubt on all of the charges against the former fry cook.

''For me, this is a surprise, a dream,'' Luis Diaz, 67, said in Spanish during an interview Tuesday at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center. ``I thought I would never get out of prison.''

The Bird Road Rapist incidents date from 1977 to 1979. The rapist's M.O.: attacking young women driving in the Bird Road-U.S. 1 area of Coral Gables. He would flash his car's headlights to signal the victim to pull over -- then brandish a gun before forcing the victims to have sex. The rapist is believed to have attacked at least 25 women.

Upon his release, Diaz plans to move in with his son Jose. On Tuesday afternoon, Jose Diaz was waiting in the lobby of the West Miami-Dade jail facility with his brother Albert and sister Marilyn.

''They tore a family apart,'' said Jose, 40.

''I'm just glad he's going to be vindicated,'' said Albert, 31.

''I feel it's a miracle and a gift from God,'' said Marilyn, 34.

CASE DISMISSAL

The Miami-Dade state attorney's office and Diaz's lawyers plan to file a joint court motion today to dismiss his remaining sentences before Circuit Judge Cristina Pereyra-Shuminer.

Prosecutors won't be bringing new charges, based on the only biological evidence recovered from the Bird Road Rapist investigation: two semen samples.

One of those samples came from one of the seven cases in which Diaz was convicted.

The other was from a rape case that police attributed to the Bird Road Rapist -- a case that never resulted in charges.

The DNA results from both tests matched each other -- but not the sample Diaz had provided. That means the same unknown man committed both crimes.

Miami-Dade authorities plan to release the two DNA tests nationally to other law enforcement agencies in hopes of catching that man.

`WHAT WE MUST DO'

Meanwhile, the Miami-Dade state attorney's office said that after all these years it would be a challenge to retry the remaining five rape cases against Diaz.

''When you add all these things together, we believe this is what we must do at this time,'' said Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle, who inherited the case from her predecessor, Janet Reno. ``Prosecutors always want to make sure that the person accused of a crime and going to court is the right person.''

Diaz's lawyers at the New York-based Innocence Project and Holland & Knight in Miami said it took years to sift through all of the evidence to expose the flaws in the rape case.

''This is a huge exoneration, close to the oldest of the 160 exonerations by the Innocence Project,'' said attorney Barry Scheck, cofounder of the legal resource center that works exclusively on post-conviction cases involving DNA testing. ``It's such an old case that it's a miracle we could find anything.''

DETAILS OF RAPES

According to the victims, the rapist spoke English with an accent and blurted out vulgar statements. He also took mementos such as a driver's license or underwear.

By summer 1979, at least 25 women reported they were victims of sexual assault or attempted attacks.

The first known victim was a 19-year-old woman who described her assailant as a Latin male, over six feet tall and about 200 pounds. She said he spoke good English, but with an accent. She said he had no particular smell on him -- a piece of evidence that would figure later in the case.

She recalled that he drove a two-door black or green fastback, possibly a 1969-70 Ford Fairlane.

The victim, who worked as a gas station attendant, said soon after the rapist's attack, she spotted a man who drove into the station in his four-door, green, 1968 Chevrolet. She later told police that she suspected the man was the rapist and gave detectives the license plate on his car. They traced it to Diaz, who stood five feet, three inches tall and weighed 134 pounds.

Diaz, who lived with his wife and three children in Westchester, always had the distinctive odor of onions on him because he worked as a fry cook in a Cuban restaurant called Lila's. He spoke little to no English.

THE INVESTIGATION

At first, police did not file charges.

But then another victim, a female journalist who worked at a local radio station, came forward.

After The Herald broke the story about the Bird Road Rapist in the summer of 1979, the radio journalist and other victims started to put pressure on the police to find a suspect.

Former Herald reporter Edna Buchanan, who covered the Bird Road Rapist, commented on the police department's handling of the case in her 1987 collection of true stories, The Corpse Had a Familiar Face.

''They kept the investigation quiet for two years while they tried to catch the Bird Road Rapist,'' wrote Buchanan, who retired from The Herald.

Police tried to keep the story out of the paper, Buchanan wrote, for fear that it would jeopardize their investigation. But The Herald published the story on a Sunday and ''the rapist was in jail by the end of the week,'' she wrote.

VICTIMS SPEAK OUT

After reading the story in The Herald, half a dozen previously unreported victims called police with new clues and a better description of the elusive rapist.

Among them: the local radio reporter. She was called in to look at an array of photos of suspects -- with Diaz's mug among them. After first saying none of the photos looked like the rapist, she eventually said Diaz resembled her attacker. Under pressure, she ultimately identified him as her attacker.

Police arrested Diaz at his home on Aug. 29, 1979.

''He looks like you could bowl him over with a puff,'' Miami-Dade police Capt. Irving Heller told Buchanan.

Police conducted both live and video line-ups: Diaz was identified by victims in eight rape cases.

THE JURY CONVICTS

At trial in May 1980, Diaz's defense attorney, Roy Black, tried to expose all of the inconsistencies in the victims' descriptions of the rapist with Diaz's profile -- to no avail. The jury convicted Diaz of four rapes, three attempted rapes, five kidnappings, five robberies and seven firearm charges. He was acquitted of one attempted rape.

Circuit Judge N. Joseph Durant Jr. sentenced him to 13 terms of life in prison for the rapes, plus 55 years for the other counts. He had to serve at least 24 years in prison without chance of parole.

An investigator for Diaz's legal team, however, continued to believe in his innocence Virginia Snyder reinterviewed victims and witnesses.

Reno, the state attorney, asked for an internal investigation in 1991. An episode of the TV program Unsolved Mysteries featured the Bird Road Rapist case.

VICTIMS RECANT

A break came in 1993, when two of Diaz's victims recanted their identification of him as the rapist. But it wasn't until 2001 that prosecutors and Diaz reached an agreement to throw out those two convictions. He still had to serve his sentence on the other five.

His son Jose contacted the Innocence Project. But time was running out for his father. An October 2003 deadline was looming for convicted felons to apply for DNA testing through the courts. With help from Holland & Knight's attorneys Steven Artusi and Stephen Warren, the Innocence Project filed Diaz's application one month before the deadline.

Despite mistakes that put him in Florida prisons for 26 years, Diaz said he was not angry at anyone -- that he felt an ''inner peace'' because Christianity helped guide him through the ordeal.

Said Diaz: ``My life has been transformed -- better than before -- because I am close to God.''

Herald staff writers Lisa Arthur, Daniel Chang and Ellie Brecher contributed to this report.

[nexusgroove]

My friends unlce was in jail for 35 years for a murder he didnt commit. A police officer actually committed the murder and 35 years later other officers involved came forward. The guy didnt even get to see his kids grow up... whole life gone. The cop that did it and the other officers involved are not even in jail.

sad.

I think the justice system needs to go under review as this problem is becoming something comon.

[funketeer]

[nexusgroove]

Colonel Harland Sanders actively began franchising his chicken business at the age of 65, a quick service restaurant pioneer, has become a symbol of entrepreneurial spirit.

More than a billion of the Colonel's "finger lickin' good" chicken dinners are served annually.

Who knows? Maybe he goes on to become the next Colonel Sanders...

the hell with KFC!

KFC SUCKS

[precog]

while on the subject of KFC http://www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com/index.asp

[funketeer]

the hell with KFC!

KFC SUCKS

[sobeton]

Katherine Fernández Rundl saying " after all these years it would be a challenge to retry the remaining five rape cases against Diaz" your not going to retry the remaning cases, becuase you have no case you moron. Diaz should sue the f*cking state..

[xxgrooveericxx]

I just had KFC for lunch.....

Back to the topic...that sucks!

[nexusgroove]

Katherine Fernández Rundl saying " after all these years it would be a challenge to retry the remaining five rape cases against Diaz" your not going to retry the remaning cases, becuase you have no case you moron. Diaz should sue the f*cking state..

I still don't understand what Kat is still doing in office.

How can anyone replace time lost, this man missed his kids growing up, he was taken from his family for 26 years and giving a bad name in the public eye.

Hell yeah, SUE,

the man is 67 years old, take that money and try to make up for the lost time.

"psychological trauma"

being locked down put in with some of the worst people in the world, told you are going to be locked up for LIFE. and knowing that you didn't do the crime you are doing to time for.

That is one of the wrose psychological trauma's a person can endor.

[sobeton]

I still don't understand what Kat is still doing in office.

How can anyone replace time lost, this man missed his kids growing up, he was taken from his family for 26 years and giving a bad name in the public eye.

Hell yeah, SUE,

the man is 67 years old, take that money and try to make up for the lost time.

"psychological trauma"

being locked down put in with some of the worst people in the world, told you are going to be locked up for LIFE. and knowing that you didn't do the crime you are doing to time for.

That is one of the wrose psychological trauma's a person can endor.

it wasn’t bad enough the state f*cked up. Rundle being the politician that she is, tries to cover her ass by leaving a cloud over Diaz’s head ,by making that statement to the press.

the state destroyed a mans life, at least have the decency to admit you f*cked up and show Diaz and his family some respect.

Rundle

[mursa]

..im all against frivalous lawsuits .............BUT ........... this guy deserves to be set for the rest of his life !

100 million $ str8 deposit to his bank account is the least the state could do for this guy .

[mursa]

Rundle

What ever happened to Rundles weed head sons ? .....got off easy i bet !

[funketeer]

I just had KFC for lunch.....

Back to the topic...that sucks!

mashed potatoes with gravy, hmmmm...yummy!!!

you're right back to the topic...equal rights, freedom and justice!