Questions Abound

By Supporter Contributor Ty Rade

Florida Supreme Court Building, Tallahassee, Florida (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Thank you for offering me the opportunity to voice my concerns regarding the Felix Garcia case. I am an attorney, and I have followed your Web site since your launch. I recently took about an hour, and did some quick investigation on my own. As an attorney, I have access to resources other than Social Media, and Blog sites. I am not licensed in the state of Florida, so I don’t have access to all the trial data, but I have included what I could find, in this post.

You’ve asked for rebuttals, and I respect that. I only hope that you can hear what I have to say, and remain open minded towards it. The simple fact is, questions abound as to how Felix and his attorneys have handled his case. It appears to me, Felix has built a career as a federal court plaintiff.

Marie Vernon

Florida process for post-trial relief included Felix’ Motion for New Trial, based on newly discovered evidence and the alleged procedural issues.  Felix withdrew the newly discovered evidence issue involving the confession of the brother in 1999. The habeus petition doesn’t tell us why this issue was withdrawn and makes no effort to overcome the withdrawal. Florida was thus denied its own process to review its judgment, when the habeus was brought.

He’s let enough time pass from trial to obscure Florida’s defenses to his allegations of unfairness and he’s frustrated the system’s own built-in protections.  I submit that he has long ago graduated from being a prisoner wrongly accused, and is now a professional cause celebre, the only job for which he has training and experience.   September clemency may well deprive him of his raison d’etre. But absent some good responses from you, as to the choices Felix himself has made, our tikkun olam [Hebrew: healing the world] may well be better spent elsewhere.

I have attached the docket sheet from the federal court (MD Fl) and its history of the petition for habeus corpus.

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The Petition for Habeus includes the affidavits of Frank and Tina, and the issues raised in the attempts to obtain post-trial relief in Fl. Felix had voluntarily withdrawn his “newly discovered evidence” issue in 1999; Frank’s affidavit was the basis for that issue. If the strongest piece of evidence you have is a confession, why on earth would you withdraw that confession in your petition?

He waited too long to obtain review of his other issues.  The guts are the Petition, Appendix to Petition, and the Response. I’d ask you to print the entire Response, as none of its arguments have been presented on yours or any other, of the blogs.  Judge Bucklaw carefully reviewed the factors that Felix said delayed his initial petition for post-trial relief, and found them unavailing.  The abandonment of the issue of Frank’s recantation is the biggest problem presented at the State and federal levels.

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In the 2006 hearing on Felix’ Motion for New Trial,  Frank testified and the matter was under consideration for a year before denial. Certainly, the State’s winning case hasn’t shown up on any blogs, but the trial court found insufficient evidence upon which to order a new trial.

Do petition signers know that Felix had changed his mind about Frank’s testimony, and had withdrawn the issue?  That he’s exhausted federal courts process?  That he had yet another bite at the apple in 06? If they did know these facts, I wonder how quick they would be to sign.

Felix litigates at will and at our expense; he’s had a trial, post-trial relief, a hearing on the Motion for New Trial, and a federal Habeus case that went all the way to denial by the US Supreme Court.  When is it dayenu [Hebrew: enough is enough]?

Ty Rade is an attorney and speaker on legal issues. He is Senior Partner of a successful law firm in Colorado, and enjoys reading poetry, studying history, and riding motorcycles.

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