Orlando Sentinel

FLORIDA: Valdes' family: We'll sue state to seek justice

The widow and father of a fatally beaten death-row prisoner said they are outraged by the acquittal of three prison guards tried for his death and vowed to seek justice through a lawsuit against the state.

"I felt from the beginning to the end of this thing that it was a setup and a scam," said Wanda Valdes, Frank Valdes' widow.

Gilbert Schaffnit, an attorney with Fletcher and Schaffnit, which represented 1 of the prison guards, said he thinks the family's civil suit was seeking more monetary gain than justice.

"Apparently Frank Valdes is worth more dead than he was alive," Schaffnit said.

Frank Valdes died July 17, 1999, at the Florida State Prison at Starke after being pulled from his cell with 22 breaks and fractures of his ribs, sternum, vertebrae, nose and jaw and numerous internal injuries.

3 former guards, Capt. Timothy Thornton, 36, and Sgts. Charles Brown and Jason Griffis, both 28, were acquitted Friday of 2nd-degree murder. 5 others still face 2nd-degree murder charges.

Guy Rubin, the family's attorney, said the acquittal was the result of "small-town justice."

"The U.S. Attorney's Office should look into this cronyism in small county courthouses," Rubin said. He said the family will have a better chance of winning the lawsuit because it will be heard in Jacksonville.

Palm Beach Post

Editorial 

The killers of a killer

It figures. Florida has had to release more death row inmates after they were exonerated than any other state. Now a death row inmate has been murdered, the culprits are obvious, and the state can't convict them.

Last week, a jury in Bradford County northeast of Gainesville acquitted 3 guards at Florida State Prison who had been charged with the July 1999 beating death of Frank Valdes. Medical examiners counted 22 broken ribs. As the prosecutor noted after the verdict, even the defense attorneys agreed that the guards had stomped Valdes. The question was whether they did so in self-defense or because they had targeted him.

If defending free speech is hard when the speech is disagreeable, defending justice is harder still when the person is more than disagreeable. Valdes was a career criminal who got the death penalty for his part in a 1987 escape attempt from Glades Correctional Institution. He shot and killed prison guard Fred Griffis. While at FSP, he had stabbed another inmate and threatened to kill a guard. Bradford and neighboring Union counties are home to 5 prisons. Imagine putting the sugar industry on trial in Hendry County.

And yet, if justice in America is to mean anything, it must apply even to the lowest among us. Sentiment in Starke, site of the trial, was that the guards simply meted out the punishment early and saved the state some money. Even on X-wing, however, the state cannot become a vigilante. In July 1999, there were killers at Florida State Prison, and all of them weren't behind bars.

Sun-Sentinel

Family of inmate who was beaten to death pushes for reform

The family of Frank Valdes, the death row inmate who was beaten to death in his cell in 1999, renewed calls Wednesday for reform in the prison system and a federal investigation into the case.

3 guards accused of Valdes' murder were acquitted by a Bradford County jury last week. 5 other guards were also charged but have yet to go to trial. In July, Mario Valdes, Frank Valdes' father, filed a wrongful death suit against the state, the Department of Corrections and prison officials in federal court.

"I don't really understand how these guards were declared innocent, completely, on all counts," said Mario Valdes of Miami, who was joined at a news conference by his former daughter-in-law, Wanda Valdes, of West Palm Beach. "That is beyond me."

Attorney Guy Rubin said the multimillion-dollar federal suit, which alleges civil rights violations, will seek reform in the prison system. Rubin said an overhaul in hiring practices is needed.

"You have the lowest-common-denominator element of people running those prisons," Rubin said.

Rubin called the trial of the 1st 3 guards "a sham and a travesty of justice." He and Wanda Valdes criticized the fact the trial was held in a small county where the prison system is a major employer, and all 8 guards were not tried together.

"I don't want this kind of small-town justice where everybody knows everybody," she said. "They're all guilty."

Rubin showed enlarged pictures of Valdes' injuries. 22 of his ribs were broken and his sternum was cracked down the middle during the beating. The guards on trial denied delivering the fatal blows, however.

Valdes' family has also asked for a federal investigation.

Valdes was on death row for killing a Glades Correctional Institution corrections officer while trying to free an inmate in a prison van outside a West Palm Beach doctor's office in 1987.

Sterling Ivey, spokesman for the Florida Department of Corrections, said he could not comment on an ongoing lawsuit.

In a statement last week, Secretary of Corrections Michael W. Moore said the Department of Corrections "requested and has been committed to a full and complete investigation into the incident."

Moore said many changes have been made since Valdes' death, including increased use of video cameras.