FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., April 12 (UPI) -- A woman charges her brother, who was cleared of raping and killing a girl after he died on Florida's death row, was framed by sheriff's deputies.
Virginia Smith's lawsuit against the Broward County Sheriff's Office is scheduled to go to trial later this year, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported. She hopes to get enough in damages to cover her brother's funeral expenses, buy a headstone and to create a foundation to help the wrongly convicted.
Frank Smith died at 52 of pancreatic cancer in 2000, nearly 15 years after he was found guilty of killing eight-year-old Shandra Whitehead. A few months later, he became the first person in the country to be exonerated by DNA after death.
"I can't even fathom in my mind being on death row for something I didn't do," Virginia Smith said. "He talked about the injustice, the suffering, the abuse he suffered while he was locked up."
The lawsuit says sheriff's deputies conspired to pin crimes on men with mental difficulties. Frank Smith was diagnosed as schizophrenic, and three other men who were wrongly convicted had low intelligence.
All four were convicted in cases where the real killer was later determined to be Eddie Lee Mosley, who was found unfit to stand trial in 1988. The sheriff's department has already settled a lawsuit with one of the other three wrongly convicted men for $2 million.
