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Rundle: Free Absolved Inmate: Miami-Dade's State Attorney Called for a Man Who Spent 13 Years in Prison on a Wrongful Conviction to Be Released From Federal Custody While Immigration

Posted on: Thursday, 1 June 2006, 21:00 CDT

By Lisa Arthur and Charles Rabin, The Miami Herald

May 26--Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle urged the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday to release Orlando Bosquete, the 51-year-old whom a judge freed from prison this week after DNA proved he was wrongly convicted of a 1982 sexual assault.

Bosquete is being held at Krome detention center in West Miami-Dade for immigration issues, including a series of felonies he pleaded guilty to and served time for after escaping from a Belle Glade prison in 1985. He was recaptured in 1995. He escaped a second time from the Dade County Jail in 1995 and was on the run for a year.

Bosquete served 13 years of a 55-year sentence for the sexual assault.

"I believe further detention serves no judicial interest and, given the special circumstances, is unnecessarily punitive," Fernandez Rundle wrote in a letter to Homeland Security. "I hope that the Department of Homeland Security will agree."

Barbara Gonzalez, a Miami spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Thursday night that ICE officials had not yet seen Fernandez Rundle's letter and could not comment.

There has been confusion about whether Bosquete, who arrived from Cuba during the 1980 Mariel boatlift, actually committed all the crimes or was picked up on warrants for crimes committed by men whose aliases he used while on the run.

Now it appears fingerprints from arrest records tie him to at least two of the four felonies he pleaded guilty to: possession of a firearm by a felon, after police found a gun on the floor of a house in which he was living with others; and acting as the middleman in the sale of clothing stolen from a Miami warehouse. Results are still pending on a second burglary case and a loitering case, according to a letter Fernandez Rundle sent Bosquete's attorneys.

None of the offenses carried a sentence of longer than six months, according to court records.

"Even if he did commit all of that while he was running, he's served his time 20 times over," said Nina Morrison, one of Bosquete's attorneys from the New York-based Innocence Project.

MIGHT BE ELIGIBLE

Based on her conversations with Homeland Security, Fernandez Rundle said the federal agency believes Bosquete might be eligible for release because of the circumstances of the wrongful sexual assault conviction, time served and the fact the convictions are all more than a decade old.

"Our understanding is that the Department of Homeland Security is waiting for Mr. Bosquete's attorneys to file the appropriate written requests before they can begin proceedings to consider paroling him," said Ed Griffith, a spokesman for the state attorney's office.

Fernandez Rundle has the power to vacate the convictions, a legal move that would, in effect, mean they never happened. That would leave immigration officials with little reason to continue to detain Bosquete. The Palm Beach County state attorney's office did that Monday with the conviction for Bosquete's 1985 escape from the Glades Correctional Facility.

But Griffith said it's premature to consider vacating the convictions until ICE considers whether to release Bosquete on a bond while the immigration proceedings play out.

ASKED FOR PAROLE

Barry Scheck, one of Bosquete's attorneys from the Innocence Project, said they have asked ICE repeatedly to release their client on a humanitarian parole since discovering an hour before Tuesday's exoneration hearing that the federal agency planned to detain Bosquete.

"We asked that they release him into the custody of his nephew, a corrections officer," Scheck said. "We offered to drive him to the Miami ICE office to have him fitted with a monitoring bracelet.

"We certainly hope ICE will now expedite parole pending proceedings. He shouldn't have to spend any more time in custody."

Morrison and John Pratt, Bosquete's Miami-based immigration lawyer, planned to send via overnight mail a packet to ICE including sworn affidavits from Bosquete's family that he can live in Marathon with his niece Dannay and her husband, a Key West corrections officer, and copies of the DNA exoneration and transcripts from the Tuesday hearing in which Monroe Circuit Judge Richard Payne vacated the sexual assault conviction.

A letter in the packet says Bosquete has a job lined up with Gonzalez Brothers Landscaping in Marathon.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Miami Herald

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Source: The Miami Herald

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