This article from Sunday's Miami Herald is a moving account of the story of James Adams who was electrocuted by the State of Florida in 1984 for the murder of Edgar Brown. Twenty years after Adams' execution there remain serious doubts about his guilt. The entire case was built on circumstantial evidence. Furthermore, according to the article, for every piece of circumstantial evidence pointing at Adams' guilt there was a piece of countering circumstantial evidence that argued for his innocence.
Read the account, I'm sure you'll find the handling of the evidence and the prosecution of the case disturbing. Of course I feel that Adams should not have been executed even if he was guilty. However, the very idea that he might have been innocent makes me extremely angry and fills my heart with true sorrow and regret. Not only might an innocent man have lost his life, somewhere out there is a murderer who watched another man die on his behalf. He's responsible for two murders as far as I'm concerned: Edgar Brown and James Adams.
20 years after a man's execution, doubts over his guilt haunt case
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The Lonely Abolitionist tracks recent death penalty news and the related musings of its abolitionist host.
"Crime is redeemed by remorse, but not by a blow of the axe or slipknot. Blood has to be washed by tears but not by blood."
Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
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The opinions expressed herein are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent the opinions of her employer or any of its officers or employees.
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3 comments:
I rejected a comment to this post that presented information as to why Adams may have been guilty (the article claimed he was beyond reasonable doubt). I rejected the comment not because of the substance of the content but because it was cut and paste from an article without attribution. To the person who commented, your dialogue is welcome here. Please feel free to post. However, to protect the copyright of others, if you reference another article in your comment, please simply provide a link and do not cut and paste text. Thank you for visiting and for your cooperation!
Adams was guilty beyond belief.
People ignorant of the law always cite "circumstantial evidence." However, circumstantial evidence is often more credible than direct evidence. For example, a fingerprint or DNA is circumstantial. And an eyewitness with bad eyesight is still direct evidence.
Adam's car was used in the crime. He had the victim's bloody money and glasses in his pocket. He was broke the day before but then had hundreds of dollars in cash (which was rare at the time)--the victim's large amount of cash was missing. For no explicable reason, Adams took his car and wanted it painted immediately. The trunk contained all of the things stolen from the victim's house. He could not provide any alibi as to his location at the time of the murder. He was identified when he was leaving the crime scene.
Adams had recently worked for the next door neighbor and was familiar with the rural area which didn't have much traffic. His car was known in the area. He was on the run for escape from a Tennessee prison for a 99 year sentence for rape.
There is that and so much much more. He's was guilty and rightly executed.
Rollins, thanks for your contribution. I don't remember the initial article I posted and the link appears dead. It looks like from your post that there was a lot of evidence against Adams. In my reference of the article, it appears there was also a lot of reason why the evidence may have not pointed to him (circumstantial, direct or both). Either way, guilty beyond a reasonable doubt or not, I don't believe he should have been executed. Thanks for contributing.
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