 Billy Holton (Photo: Innocence Project of Florida)
She later told police that the first man threatened her and T.D. with a knife and then covered her with a bedspread. The second man grabbed T.D. and held him in a corner of the room as the first man sexually assaulted P.H. She said the first man ejaculated onto her abdomen and wiped it with a towel. She said the second man then sexually assaulted her, but did not ejaculate.
She said the men were in the home for more than two hours before they left, taking a small amount of cash that she had. She said the two men referred to themselves as “Red” and “Tim.”
P.H. was taken to the hospital where a rape kit was prepared. Jacksonville Sheriff’s office investigators collected the bedding and towels as evidence. Evidence technicians dusted for fingerprints, but only P.H.’s prints were found. The physical evidence was sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) for testing.
Later that morning, a police officer was patrolling near P.H.’s home as part of an investigation of car break-ins. The officer saw 19-year-old Billy Holton walking and stopped to question him. Records would later be unclear about whether or not Holton was taken for a show-up identification procedure in front of P.H. Holton was not arrested that day.
After P.H. told police that she could not identify her attackers, the investigation went cold.
In the meantime, Holton was convicted of two robberies and sentenced to six years in prison. In January 1987, a prison inmate named Billy Baucom wrote a letter to police saying that Holton had admitted committing the rape and robbery along with 19-year-old Tim Smith.
A detective showed P.H. a photographic lineup that included a photograph of Holton, and she identified him as the first assailant. Her son did not identify anyone. Both were shown separate photographic lineups that included Smith, but neither could identify him as the second assailant.
On March 3, 1987, Holton and Smith were charged with sexual battery, aggravated assault, kidnapping, burglary, and armed robbery of P.H. and the aggravated assault, kidnapping, and robbery of T.D.
The two men were scheduled to go to trial in Duval County Circuit Court in August 1987. However, Baucom could not be found. The prosecution then negotiated a plea agreement with Smith. He ultimately pled guilty to a burglary charge in return for testifying against Holton. Smith would later be sentenced to time served (216 days in jail) and five years of probation.
Holton then went to trial. P.H. testified and again identified Holton as the first attacker, the man who had ejaculated on her. FDLE serologist Paul Doleman testified that the victim, Holton, and Smith were “secreters” so their blood types could be determined by looking at other bodily fluids such as saliva or semen. He identified the victim’s blood type as O. He also conducted an acid phosphatase test on the vaginal and cervical swabs taken from the victim and the test indicated the presence of semen. From there, he determined that the source of the semen was also a secreter with a blood type A.
Doleman said that Holton and Smith both had blood type A. He said that 32 percent of the population were secreters with type A blood. He said he could not identify any specific person as the source of the semen.
Smith testified that he was celebrating his birthday with some friends and afterward, as he was walking home, he ran into Holton. Smith said they bought two quarts of beer and went to a nearby abandoned home where they spent about two hours drinking and smoking marijuana. According to Smith, Holton said he knew a prostitute who lived across the street, and asked if Smith would follow him inside if Holton went in first.
Smith said that Holton left to “scope out” the house, then returned and said he would go in through the back door. Smith said Holton told him to wait a few minutes before coming. Smith said that when he came into the house, Holton was on the bed with P.H. who had a blanket over her head. T.D. was standing in the corner.
Smith said that Holton raped P.H. first and ejaculated on her abdomen, wiping it with a towel afterward. Smith said he raped P.H., but did not ejaculate.
The prosecution presented evidence that hairs that P.H. claimed to have pulled from the head of the first assailant had been microscopically examined. The examination excluded P.H. and Holton. Smith could not be included or excluded.
The defense presented evidence that P.H. knew Holton’s mother, Joyce, and they had crossed paths during the time after the crime. On at least one occasion, Holton was with his mother, she said, and P.H. did not appear to recognize him as the first assailant.
On September 4, 1987, the jury convicted Holton of sexual battery, aggravated assault, burglary, kidnapping, and robbery with a deadly weapon. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
The First District Florida Court of Appeal upheld the convictions in February 1989. Over the years, Holton filed various motions for post-conviction relief, but all were denied. In 2003, Holton filed a motion for DNA testing, which had not been available at the time of his trial. In August 2005, FDLE reported it was unable to find any male DNA using short-tandem repeat (STR) analysis.
Holton was allowed to obtain testing from Orchid Cellmark, a private laboratory which was capable of conducting polymerase chain reaction (PCR) DNA testing, which was more powerful than STR testing. The evidence was sent to Cellmark in 2007.
Cellmark was unable to obtain sufficient DNA from most of the items presented for testing,
including the vaginal and cervical swabs. However, the laboratory was able to obtain a clear DNA profile from three semen-stained areas of the blanket used to cover the victim’s body during the sexual assault. Cellmark issued its report on December 31, 2007, finding the DNA testing excluded Holton as the source of DNA from the three areas on the blanket. Cellmark said that all the DNA samples from these areas came from the same unknown male except one which yielded a mixed result from the victim and the same unknown male.
In February 2008, a motion seeking post-conviction relief was filed based on the test results. The prosecution and defense then agreed to send the test results to another private laboratory, DNA Diagnostic Center (DDC) to compare the results to Smith’s DNA. In October 2009, DDC reported that Smith was the source of the DNA from the blanket.
During this time, Holton also filed a motion claiming his sentence had been erroneously calculated. That motion was denied in December 2009. Holton appealed. In 2010, the First District Court of Appeals reversed that ruling and remanded the case for a resentencing hearing.
In December 2011, the motion for post-conviction relief based on the DNA test results was denied. Holton appealed.
On August 22, 2012, following the resentencing hearing, Holton’s sentence was reduced to 25 years in prison to be followed by 10 years of sex offender registration. He was released the following day, 24 years, 11 months and 21 days after his conviction.
In 2014, the First District Florida Court of Appeals reversed the denial of Holton’s post-conviction motion based on the DNA results. The court ruled that the post-conviction motion could not be denied without an evidentiary hearing.
An evidentiary hearing was finally scheduled in June 2023. The prosecution and the defense agreed that the semen stains on the blanket were from Smith.
Holton, represented by the Innocence Project of Florida, also presented the testimony of Dr. Julie Heinig, laboratory director at DNA Diagnostics Center in Fairfield, Ohio. Dr. Heinig testified that Smith’s ejaculate was the source of the DNA deposited on the blanket based on the large size of the stains, the amount of DNA in the sperm cells, and the complete, single source profiles obtained from the DNA. She also testified that the presence of the large semen stains were consistent with Smith ejaculating on the victim’s abdomen and having the semen transfer to the blanket or ejaculating directly on the blanket or both.
Dr. Jennifer Dysart, an expert in eyewitness identification and memory, testified that many of the factors that can negatively affect the accuracy of eyewitness identification, including exposure, duration, proper lineup instructions, confidence malleability, post-event information, and unconscious transference were present in Holton’s case.
Dr. Dysart noted that P.H. gave conflicting testimony about the duration of the exposure she had to the first assailant, ranging from none in her initial statement to police to fifteen seconds, to which she testified at trial.
Dr. Dysart said that if P.H. had seen the face of her first assailant, that opportunity ended when the assailant put a blanket over her head for the entirety of the crime. Although P.H. told police the first assailant had shoulder-length hair, Holton never had shoulder-length hair. Dr. Dysart said the duration and quality of P.H.’s exposure to the first assailant diminished her memory of the perpetrator. Dr. Dysart also testified the year-long gap between the crime and the photo lineup when she identified Holton increased the probability of a mistaken identification because the memory trace becomes weakened over time. Dr. Dysart also noted that high levels of stress and fear have been shown to decrease a witness’s ability to encode information accurately.
Dr. Dysart also outlined problems with the photographic lineup. Holton stood out because he was the only person wearing a white t-shirt and the detective administering the lineup told P.H. that the police already had a suspect in jail for an unrelated crime.
On July 29, 2024, Duval County Circuit Court Judge James H. Daniel vacated Holton’s convictions and ordered a new trial.
The judge noted that although P.H. had since died, “she is no less deserving of justice for the brutal crime she endured in the early morning hours of February 7, 1986. However, justice cannot be served when guilt is based on evidence that has since been discredited to the extent it creates a reasonable doubt whether the accused committed the crime.”
The judge noted that the prosecution had argued the newly discovered DNA evidence did not add anything to the jury’s knowledge that wasn’t already before it during the original trial. The prosecution had noted that Smith never denied he participated in the sexual assault. “While true, the State overlooks the impact the new DNA evidence has on the believability of Tim Smith’s version of what happened that morning and its overall importance to the State’s case,” Judge Daniel said.
The judge noted that at trial, the prosecution had stressed Smith’s testimony that he did not ejaculate to “circumvent the problem of Tim Smith sharing the same blood type” as Holton. “[T]he objective forensic evidence now points squarely to Tim Smith thereby further eroding his credibility as a witness,” the judge declared.
Holton, the judge said, had “met his burden to show the newly discovered evidence would probably produce an acquittal on retrial.”
On October 29, 2024, the prosecution dismissed the charges.
– Maurice Possley
|