American Board of Information Security and Computer Forensics

Anthony Caravella was 15 years old when he was sentenced to life in prison for the 1983 rape and murder of Ada Cox Jankowski, 58, of Miramar, Florida. On March 25, 2010, shortly before his 42nd birthday, Caravella got his life back—along with an apology from Broward County Circuit Judge Thomas M. Lynch IV.

“The past couple of years a lot of people have worked very hard for you...on the other hand, there are some people who may owe you an apology,” the judge told Caravella. “Let me take the opportunity to apologize to you for the criminal justice system of the state of Florida,” Lynch said. “Good luck in the future, sir” (McMahon, 2010).

Caravella spent more than half his life in prison before prosecutors asked that his convictions and life sentence be thrown out when new testing of his DNA showed it did not match genetic evidence recovered from Jankowski’s body.

“I never had any doubt that Anthony was innocent,” said public defender Diane Cuddihy, who worked for nine years to free him. “The shocking thing is that an innocent man can be convicted like this” (McMahon, 2010a).

Caravella had an IQ of 67, well below normal, when he gave police several inconsistent statements that were treated as confessions and used against him at trial. The original prosecutor, Robert Carney, sought the death penalty for Caravella (Innocence Project of Florida, 2010).

Caravella was provisionally released from prison September 10, 2009, when DNA testing appeared to exonerate him. He had to wear a GPS ankle monitor and obey a curfew while prosecutors did more forensic testing. Final DNA test results confirmed his innocence on March 24, 2010, leading to his official exoneration.

Cuddihy argued in 2009 that new evidence showed police coerced the confession from Caravella when he was arrested on an unrelated charge in December 1983, two months after Jankowski’s body was found in a field at Miramar Elementary School (Murray, 2010). She also contended the teen was beaten and only confessed in exchange for the release of a female friend who was arrested with him.

Both Cuddihy and prosecutor Carolyn McCann, who handled the new appeal since 2001, say Caravella was convicted largely on the strength of his statements to police, despite a lack of physical evidence.

Miramar police spokeswoman Tania Rues noted that it was the first time allegations that Caravella was beaten were ever raised. “This is the first time we’ve heard these allegations in the 26 years since the arrest,” she said in September 2009 (McMahon, 2009).

Cuddihy said Caravella made five different, conflicting statements to Miramar police and a Broward Sheriff’s Office sergeant over the course of seven days, getting key details wrong in the first statement and, by the fifth, including key information that appeared to have been suggested to him by police.

The case illustrates how juveniles and mentally challenged suspects are vulnerable to confessing to crimes they did not commit, say specialists on false confessions and wrongful convictions.

“When statements in these kinds of cases get more and more detailed and incriminating, we find that the information can only end up in the suspect’s knowledge by a process known as contamination,” said Steven Drizin, a Northwestern University law professor and expert on false confessions. “Nine out of 10 times, the source of that information is law enforcement officers” (McMahon, 2009). Cuddihy credited persistent coverage of Caravella’s case by South Florida Sun Sentinel reporter Paula McMahon with keeping his plight in the public eye. “Just a little pressure from the press … and I have no doubt that her detailed reporting is the reason that Mr. Caravella is a free man today” (Maucker, 2010).

At the time of Caravella’s release, Broward prosecutors and Miramar police said they accepted the scientific evidence but offered no apology (McMahon, 2010).

Caravella is the 252nd person in the nation and the 12th in Florida to be exonerated by post-conviction DNA testing, according to the Innocence Project of Florida, a group that tracks such cases (McMahon, 2010).

References

Innocence Project of Florida (2010, March 30). Anthony Caravella officially exonerated. Retrieved April 20, 2010, from http://floridainnocence.org/content/?p=1860

McMahon, P. (2010, March 25). Exonerated inmate given freedom, judge’s apology. Retrieved April 20, 2010, from http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_14760079).

McMahon, P. (2010, March 25). DNA testing exonerates Florida man convicted of 1983 murder. Retrieved April 20, 2010, from http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/25/nation/la-na-dna-florida25-2010mar25

McMahon, P. (2009, September 4). DNA result just one of troubling aspects in convicted man’s case. Retrieved April 20, 2010, fromhttp://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/sfl-dna-caravella-b090309,0,258915.story

Maucker, E. (2010, April 4). Journalist's crusade: persistence shows commitment to serving the public. Retrieved April 20, 2010, from http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2010-04-04/news/fl-emcol-mcmahon-oped0404-20100404_1_caravella-case-anthony-caravella-ada-cox-jankowski

Murray, J. (2010, March 25). Man officially exonerated after 26 years in prison. Retrieved April 20, 2010, from http://cbs4.com/local/anthony.caravella.dna.2.1588746.html  n