Reuters Man, Wrongly Jailed, Freed After 22 Years MIAMI (Reuters) -- A mentally disabled man
once known as one of Florida's most prolific serial killers,
was released early on Saturday after 22 years in prison,
cleared by DNA testing that did not exist when he was
convicted.
Jerry Frank Townsend, 49, was convicted in
the early 1980s of six murders and one rape and had been
serving concurrent life sentences.
Townsend, who has a mental capacity of an
8-year-old, was freed from the Polk Correctional Institution
near Lakeland, Florida, after a chain of events sparked by DNA
testing cleared him of several murders in Florida.
He left the prison shortly after midnight
EDT -- several hours after a judge ordered his release --
accompanied by his mother and sister and dressed in a white
shirt, white cap and gray slacks, witnesses said. A small
convoy of cars drove out of the gates.
"He's out," one passenger shouted to waiting
reporters but the group did not stop and made no other
comment.
Earlier, guards had patted him on the back
and wished him well as he waited to leave, a prison official
said.
Circuit Judge Scott Silverman on Friday
ordered Townsend released, saying he was "the victim of an
enormous tragedy".
Townsend was convicted in 1980 of
first-degree murder in the 1973 killings of Naomi Gamble and
Barbara Brown in Broward County. He had confessed to the two
murders and also a third, that of 13-year-old Sonja Marion in
1979.
Two years later he pleaded guilty to two
slayings in Miami in the late 1970s and no contest to two 1979
murders in Broward County.
But in 1998 a Fort Lauderdale police
detective -- prodded by the plea of Sonja Marion's mother to
find her daughter's "real" killer -- began a DNA review of the
Townsend cases. Last year DNA testing of a semen sample on the
child's shorts implicated another man.
In March, Townsend was cleared of two
Broward killings through DNA testing, eliminating two life
sentences. Ultimately he was cleared of all the Broward
charges and county Sheriff Ken Jenne apologized to Townsend in
person.
The Broward moves to an investigation of the
other convictions and his subsequent release.
Copyright © 2001. Reuters News Service. All rights reserved. saved from url: http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml
June 16 , 2001
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