Jesse Tafero

Jessie Joseph Tafero (born October 12, 1946 — died May 4, 1990), was executed via electric chair in the state of Florida for the murders of Florida Highway Patrol officer Phillip Black and Donald Irwin, a visiting Canadian constable and friend of Black.

The crime, trial, and execution

On the morning of February 20, 1976, Black and Irwin approached a Camaro parked at a Deerfield Beach rest stop for a routine check. Tafero, his partner/lover Sonia Jacobs Linder, her two children (ages 9 years and 10 months), and Walter Rhodes, an acquaintance were found asleep inside. Black pulled the door open, waking Rhodes, and saw a gun lying on the floor under Rhodes' feet. He took the gun, asked Rhodes for ID, and asked Rhodes to exit the car and stand in front of it, which Rhodes did. Black radioed in the serial number on the gun and Rhodes' ID, during which time Tafero passed his gun back to Jacobs, who was sitting in the rear sear of the car with the children. When neither Tafero or Jacobs provided identification, Black pulled Tafero out of the Camaro and handed him to Irwin. Tafero was pinned to the hood of Black's patrol car while Irwin tried to put handcuffs on him. Black asked Jacobs for ID, and she handed him a traffic slip made out to Judy Ann DeStefano. Black took Jacobs' purse and rummaged through it. He found a passport belonging to Ellen Eisenberg, a loaded .22 Derringer, and a package of marijuana, which he threw onto the pavement. At that point he backed up to the patrol car, pulled out his service revolver and pointed it at Rhodes, who turned his back and raised his hands to indicate cooperation. Tafero was still pinned to the hood of the patrol car when Black swung around an pointed his gun at Jacobs, who was still sitting in the back of the Camaro. Shots were exchanged between Jacobs and Black, with Black's shot going wild and shattering the windshield of the Camaro. Tafero managed to break free of Irwin's grasp in the confusion, grabbed the gun from Jacobs, turned and fired four shots into Black, killing him instantly, and then fired two shots into Irwin, who died shortly afterward. Rhodes turned his head at the first shots and saw Jacobs hand the gun to Tafero, then saw Tafero shoot Black and Irwin. Tafero's gun was still loaded, so Rhodes followed Tafero's orders when Tafero indicated they should take the patrol car for their escape. Tafero assisted Jacobs out of the Camaro and took his locked briefcase out of the Camaro. Jacobs and the children got into the patrol car and Rhodes drove off. Two truckdrivers' testimony and other witnesses at the scene corroborate this version of what happened.

Tafero then directed Rhodes to turn into Century Village and to take Leonard Levinson's car keys and his Cadillac. While Rhodes was doing that, Tafero put a gun to Levinson's head and forced him into the Cadiallac. Three eyewitnesses and the kidnap victim corroborate this account of the kidnapping. Levinson saw Tafero reload his gun while they were in the back seat of the Camaro. Rhodes, Tafero, and Jacobs were arrested after being stopped at a roadblock. The gun retrieved from Rhodes was determined to not have been fired and not the gun that was used to kill the officers. The gun retrieved from Tafero was determined to have been the gun that shot the officers. The special teflon-coated KTW armor-piercing bullets were in the gun, in a clip on Tafero's belt, and there were two empty boxes for KTW ammunition, marked "For Police Only," found in Tafero's locked briefcase. Jacobs and Tafero cleaned their hands before they were tested for gunpowder residue; Rhode's positive test on the back of his left hand was explained by the lab as possibly caused by the bullet wound on the back of his left middle finger (Rhodes is right-handed) and the fact that he had been handcuffed by officers who had recently fired their weapons. Trial testimony at Jacobs' trial determined that the gunpowder residue results were inconclusive for all three defendants.

Rhodes' court-appointed defense counsel never attempted a defense for Rhodes, despite three being 6 eyewitnesses and ballistics evidence that exonerated Rhodes from the shootings and kidnapping. Rhodes was only given the choice of a death sentence or a plea bargain that included two counts of second-degree murder, one count of kidnapping, and his agreement to testify truthfully at his co-defendants' trials. Rhodes received three concurrent life sentences. Tafero and Jacobs were each convicted of two counts of first degree murder, one count of kidnapping, and Tafero was also convicted of robbery. They were sentenced to death, but Jacobs later got her sentence commuted to life because the jury had recommended a life sentence for her. The children were placed in the care of Jacobs' parents until their deaths in a 1982 plane crash. The children were then separated and lived with relatives and family friends.

Tafero and Jacobs continued their contact with each other through letters while serving time in the prison. Because there was no death row for women in Florida, Jacobs was put into solitary confinement for the first five years of her imprisonment. She and Tafero were only let out once or twice a week for exercise, which is standard treatment for all death row inmates. She learned yoga and used it to help her survive her ordeal; after being moved to the general prison population, Jacobs began teaching yoga to other prisoners.

Tafero and Jacobs both had connections to organized crime. Jacobs had been arrested for dealing drugs, including cocaine, two years before she met Tafero and became his partner. Tafero was a member of the Ricky Cravero crime organization. Under pressure from other members of Cravero's gang 1982, Rhodes signed two different recantation documents and then reported them to Walter LaGraves, the investigator on the case. At one time, Carol King Guralnick, an attorney representing Tafero, tried to bribe Rhodes to recant his testimony, but Rhodes had contacted authorities and wore a hidden microphone while Guralnick spoke with him. She was later charged with witness tampering and censured by the bar association before she died in a car accident. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Jacobs' conviction because of a recantation by Brenda Isham and a copy of Rhodes' lie detector test pre-interview, in which Rhodes said he couldn't be sure whether o not Jacobs had fired a gun. At pre-trial proceedings, Jacobs pled guilty (nolo contendere) to all of the charges against her under an Alford plea, was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder, one count of kidnapping, and released for time served as part of her plea agreement.

Tafero's death sentence was upheld through all of his appeals and the governor Robert Martinez did not intervene. Tafero was electrocuted. However, the machine, dubbed "Old Sparky", malfunctioned, causing six-inch flames to shoot out of Tafero's head. In all, three jolts of electricity were required to render Tafero dead. The Tafero case became the cause célèbre among death penalty opponents, who cited the brutal circumstances of his execution. The only source of doubts as to his guilt has been Jacobs misrepresentation of the case, which is not supported by the evidence, testimony or records in the case.

After Jacobs conviction and release, she proclaimed her innocence. She was reunited with her children and became an outspoken opponent of the death penalty. She moved to Ireland, where she now lives with her new partner Peter Pringle (also a Death Row exoneree) and continues to teach yoga, offering it also to prison inmates in her new country. She wrote the 2007 book, Stolen Time, about the events that changed her life but which omits significant parts of her criminal history and that departs from the facts regarding her role in the killings in significant ways. Jacobs also campaigns for human rights, working with Amnesty International and other organizations. Tafero and Jacobs' story, and the stories of five other exonerees, was told in a play called The Exonerated which has been performed in the US and UK. The playwrights were told Jacobs had been exonerated, and represented her as such, although Jacobs was neither innocent or exonerated. Jacobs character was portrayed in a made-for-TV version of the play by actress Susan Sarandon.

References

Site which gives actual facts of the case, downloadable copies of case records
List of Florida executions
List of all prisoners executed in Florida
The Innocent Executed, by William Kreuter.
Interview wit Sunny Jacobs by Jackie McGlone.

Sunny Jacobs. Stolen Time. Doubleday. ISBN 0385611404

The crime, trial, and execution

See also

References