Paul Hildwin, 54, will remain on death row as he waits to find out whether Florida intends to prosecute him for a second time

A prisoner in Florida who has spent 28 years on death row has had his murder conviction and death sentence overturned after DNA evidence destroyed the prosecution case used against him almost three decades ago.



Paul Hildwin, 54, will remain on death row as he waits to find out whether the Florida authorities intend to prosecute him for a second time after the state’s supreme court vacated his conviction and sentence and ordered a retrial. In a 5-2 ruling, the majority of the court said that “we cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that a significant pillar of the state’s case, as presented to the jury, has collapsed.”

In 1990, Hildwin came close to losing his life at the hands of Florida after a death warrant was issued and a date set for his execution. But tenacious legal work by the Innocence Project of Florida fended off his death, and painstakingly revealed crucial details pointing to his wrongful conviction.

He was put on death row for the 1985 murder of Vronzettie Cox, 42, who had been raped and whose body was found in the trunk of a car hidden in woods in Hernando County, Florida. Hildwin had accepted a ride from Cox and her boyfriend, William Haverty, and was later found to have forged a check he had stolen from her and to have some of her possessions including a radio and some money in his house.

His defence at the 1986 trial was that he had stolen the items while Cox and Haverty were having a violent argument in the car. But the prosecution told the jury that forensic tests linked Hildwin to semen and saliva found on underpants on the victim’s body.

The state said the tests showed that the source of the material had to have been a “nonsecretor” – a man who did not secrete blood into other bodily fluids, which narrowed the field of possible suspects to 11% of white males. Hildwin was a “nonsecretor”, the jury was told, while Haverty, who the defence claimed was the true culprit, was a “secretor”.

In 2003, the “nonsecretor” argument used as a central tenet of the prosecution case was conclusively undermined after DNA tests of the samples proved that Hildwin could not have been the source. But it still took the Innocence Project a further seven years of legal tussling to force the state of Florida to check the semen and saliva remains against a national crime database.

In 2010, the Florida supreme court ordered the check to be done, and that in turn revealed a positive match from the semen sample to Haverty. Now aged 50, Haverty is currently serving a 20-year sentence for attempted child sexual assault.

Were Hildwin to be exonerated, it would add to Florida’s long history of wrongful death sentences. It has exonerated 24 death row prisoners – more than any other state.

