After spending almost two decades in prison for a crime he did not commit, a Florida man will receive a historic $817,000 payout from the state.
Fifty-three-year-old Leonard Cure makes history also by being the first man to be man exonerated by the Broward State Attorney’s office.
On Friday, June 9, Gov. Ron DeSantis stamped a claims bill that not only gives Cure nearly a million to help restore his life but also approved finances to go to his education. His office says the bill is set to provide relief for the “tragic consequences” of his wrongful conviction, according to the Sun Sentinel.
The man will also receive 120 hours worth of college tuition and fees.
Assistant State Attorney Arielle Demby Berger, who was instrumental in securing Cure’s freedom and setting up a process for individuals like him to have a fair shake at justice, said, “These cases are rare and take a lot of time.”
“This is exactly why conviction review units and the opportunity for an exoneration are so crucial to ensuring justice. While Mr. Cure spent more than 16 years in prison, the entire state has recognized this error and worked together to remedy it.”
In a statement, State Attorney Harold Pryor said, “We put aside our political differences and agreed that a man was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned and that he should be compensated.”
“No amount of money will get those years back for Mr. Cure or give him peace, but it is a small gesture that recognizes Mr. Cure was wronged and that we, in the State of Florida and in the justice system, will help him and compensate him,” Pryor continued.
The 53-year-old’s exoneration did not come overnight.
Cure was convicted in 2004 of armed robbery with a firearm and aggravated assault with a firearm. Witnesses said he robbed a Walgreens drugstore for $1,700 in cash in 2003. He was sentenced to life in prison. The man always maintained he never committed the crime but never was confident that his innocence mattered.
However, after a little over a decade of being incarcerated, he decided to advocate differently for himself.
Cure first filed for post-conviction relief in 2015 but was denied. He attempted to get the attention of the court, hoping they would hear his case the next year, and was denied again, according to the Innocence Project of Florida, which helped the man gain his freedom.
In December 2019, Cure requested that the newly created Conviction Review Unit of the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit re-investigate his case.
ASA Arielle Demby Berger, the director of the CRU, reviewed the case and decided to reach out to the Innocence Project of Florida for additional assistance. They decided to take his case in February 2020 and assigned Krista Dolan to represent him.
Within three months, Berger’s office had Cure’s sentence modified to 16 years, which allowed him to be released based on time served. The evidence provided proved that the eyewitness misidentified him, officers committed misconduct, and he had ineffective assistance of counsel.
The CRU and IPF argued there was no physical evidence that linked him to the armed robbery. They pointed to his alibi, a receipt that showed he withdrew $20 from an ATM two and a half miles away from the Walgreens almost 20 minutes before the robbery.
Originally, this was brought up in his first case, and the jury could not come to an agreement about his innocence, ending the process in a mistrial. The second trial did not include these details and sealed his conviction.
By Dec. 11, 2020, about a year after the IPF took his case and 16 years after he was convicted for a crime he did not commit, Judge John J. Murphy vacated his convictions and three days later called for all of his charges to be dismissed.
After hearing the news, the IPF’s executive director Seth Miller said his client was “thrilled.”
“He was just so thankful that this part of the process is over and that he’s going to be able to have some resources available to really accomplish some of his goals and then have financial stability at this point in his life,” Miller said.
