From Death Row to Freedom

Florida Book Awards, Silver Medal for Florida NonfictionFlorida Historical Society Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore AwardAn insiders account of a wrongfulconviction and the fight to overturn it during the civil rights eraThisbook is an insiders account of the case of Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee,two Black men who were wrongfully charged and convicted of the murder of twowhite gas station attendants in Port St. Joe, Florida, in 1963, and sentencedto death. Phillip Hubbart, a defense lawyer for Pitts and Lee for more than 10years, examines the crime, the trial, and the appeals with both a keen legalperspective and an awareness of the endemic racism that pervaded the case andobstructed justice. Hubbartdiscusses how the case against Pitts and Lee was based entirely on confessions obtained from the defendants and an alleged eyewitness throughprolonged, violent interrogations and how local authorities repeatedly rejectedlater evidence pointing to the real killer, a white man well known to the PortSt. Joe police. The book followsthe cases tortuous route through the Florida courts to the defendantseventual exoneration in 1975 by the Florida governor and cabinet.From Death Row to Freedom is a thoroughchronicle of deep prejudice in the courts and brutality at the hands of policeduring the civil rights era of the1960s. Hubbart argues that the Pitts-Lee case is a piece of Americanhistory that must be remembered, alongwith other similar incidents, in order for the country to make any progress toward racial reconciliation today.Publicationof this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the AmericanRescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.