Writer revisits 1987 case that put a police officer on death row. The Associated Press
MASCOTTE -- A retired homicide detective and aspiring novelist says a small-town police officer convicted of the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl and sent to death row 15 years ago is an innocent man.
But the detectives and prosecutors who worked the case said they are confident that James Duckett, now 45, strangled Teresa McAbee in 1987 after she went to a nearby convenience store to buy a pencil.
Duckett was a rookie officer alone on duty in the Central Florida town on the night of the crime, May 11, 1987. He was accused of picking the girl up at a convenience store while cruising at night in his patrol car. He says he saw her with an older boy and told her to go home.
Distinct tire tracks found at the scene were matched to the tires found on the Mascotte Police Department's two patrol cars and Duckett's and McAbee's fingerprints were found on the hood of the car. At trial, three teens testified that in the months prior to the murder, Duckett had given rides to each of them and had made sexual advances.
"It's like weaving a net and all these strands fit together perfectly and indicated he was as guilty as sin," said prosecutor Stephen Hurm.
Duckett was convicted May 19, 1988, and Judge Jerry Lockett sentenced him to death July 1, 1988. His wife has since divorced him, and his attorney, Jack Edmund, was killed in a car accident.
But not everyone accepted his guilt.
Former Mascotte Police Chief Michael Brady, Duckett's boss at the time of the crime, insists Duckett is innocent and was framed. So does the town's then-mayor, Josh Thomas.
"Jim Duckett never killed that girl," Thomas said. "Everybody up here knows he didn't do it."
Investigators said there's not a doubt in their mind about his guilt.
"James Duckett is a cold-blooded killer," said Rocky Harris, one of the detectives who worked on the case. "They just don't want to believe that a cop did that, but a cop did do that."
Marshall Frank, a former homicide investigator in Miami-Dade County, started researching the Duckett case on his own after he started work on a novel. In a two-part series published in The Miami Herald earlier this week, he said he has concluded that the prosecution misinterpreted fingerprint evidence, fumbled both the tire cast and pubic hair identification and failed to pay attention to things that might have played in Duckett's favor.
Frank is highly critical of Edmund, the flamboyant and prominent Polk County lawyer who died in a traffic accident on March 7, 2002.
The Herald reported that Edmund took a retainer and questioned his client in jail in October 1987. But Duckett said he never saw his lawyer again until the first day of his trial five months later.
Edmund never took a deposition from anyone involved in his client's murder case, the newspaper said.
"He winged it," Frank told the Herald. "Sometimes I think Jack Edmund was working for the other side."
Frank said Edmund failed to show up for the videotaped deposition of Gwen Gurley, the state's star witness. In his place, Edmund sent a young lawyer who shared his office space and had nothing to do with the case.
Frank also said Edmund knew about an independent criminologist and hair-fiber expert who disputed the hair identification that was critical in the case but did not call him to testify.
Prosecutors Tom Hogan and Hurm said Edmund did a good job on the case and wasn't trying to sink his client.
Frank also raised the possibility that the pubic hair that tied Duckett to the crime was switched, though the prosecutors on the case note he doesn't offer any evidence to support that claim.
"To say that there was some transplant of the hair, or that this guy was framed, is just a typical death row reach that's sensational," said Hogan, now an attorney in Brooksville.
Duckett remains on death row, awaiting a ruling from an appeal to the Florida Supreme Court. Last month, a judge ordered DNA testing on clothes found near McAbee's body.
"The Lake County investigators all believe James Duckett is guilty and we welcome this as a part of due process," said Chuck Johnson, one of the first detectives on the scene, and now an attorney in Leesburg. "If it were to prove that he were innocent then it truly would be a travesty of justice, but none of us believe he is innocent. And none of us participated in a conspiracy."
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