From Death Row to Freedom: The Struggle for Racial Justice in the Pitts-Lee Case

by Phillip A. Hubbart

An insider's account of a wrongful
conviction and the fight to overturn it during the civil rights era



This
book is an insider's account of the case of Freddie Lee Pitts and Wilbert Lee,
two Black men who were wrongfully charged and convicted of the murder of two
white gas station attendants in Port St. Joe, Florida, in 1963, and sentenced
to death. Phillip Hubbart, a defense lawyer for Pitts and Lee for more than 10
years, examines the crime, the trial, and the appeals with both a keen legal
perspective and an awareness of the endemic racism that pervaded the case and
obstructed justice.



Hubbart
discusses how the case against Pitts and Lee was based entirely on confessions obtained from the defendants and an alleged "eye witness" through
prolonged, violent interrogations and how local authorities repeatedly rejected
later evidence pointing to the real killer, a white man well-known to the Port
St. Joe police. The book follows
the case's tortuous route through the Florida courts to the defendants'
eventual exoneration in 1975 by the Florida governor and cabinet.



From Death Row to Freedom is a thorough
chronicle of deep prejudice in the courts and brutality at the hands of police
during the civil rights era of the
1960s. Hubbart argues that the Pitts-Lee case is a piece of American
history that must be remembered, along
with other similar incidents, in order for the country to make any progress toward racial reconciliation today.



Publication of this work made possible by a
Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the
National Endowment for the Humanities.

Genres: Nonfiction

364 pages, ebook

Published June 20, 2023

Reviews

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful a new book about the historic, famous and infamous Pitts-Lee casein Florida, in which two black men were beaten and coerced into confessing to murders they did not commit. They were sentenced to death, and that judgment persisted even after another, fact-specific confession emerged from the actual murderer. They were exonerated and released from Florida’s Raiford prison only after years of efforts by their attorneys and by tenacious investigation and journalistic efforts chiefly by Gene Miller of The Miami Herald, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work.

The new book -- From Death Row to Freedom, the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Pitts-Lee Case -- is by Phillip Hubbart, a quiet hero among Florida attorneys. Attorney Hubbart represented the defense, and the book shows his vast factual knowledge, and insightful reflection, about the case. The author is meticulously objective and detailed in setting forth the evidence, while also presenting the crushing context of its time and place – the center of the civil rights movement, in a Florida town clinging to the segregationist past. Pitts and Lee were sentenced to death on August 28, 1963, the same day as Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech at the Washington monument.

I hope that you will consider further this book, and this moment in Florida’s history.

The Prologue’s opening page sets the scene: “On the night of July 31, 1963, at the height of the civil rights crisis in the South, two white filling station attendants were held up at gunpoint at a gas station outside a small southern town in the Florida Panhandle. The attendants were kidnapped from the station and were found murdered several days later in the countryside. About $100 in cash was stolen from the station.
“Two young Black men, Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee, were soon arrested for this crime. They were interrogated by local police at all hours of the day and night, subjected to police threats and beatings, were represented by a court-appointed lawyer who cooperated with the police, and were so intimidated that they confessed and pled guilty to these crimes, even though they were entirely innocent. In short order, they were convicted and sentenced to death.
“After twelve years of protracted legal proceedings and wrangling at the highest levels of state government, Pitts and Lee were eventually cleared of the charges against them and walked out of prison as free men. The crime for which they were convicted had, in fact, been committed by a white man --- a total stranger to Pitts and Lee, but well-known to the local police.
“This book is my insider’s account of that case. I was one of the defense lawyers for these two men, having joined the defense team two years after their original convictions.
“We defense lawyers, however, were not primarily responsible for Pitts’ and Lee’s ultimate vindication. That distinction belongs to a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, a private polygraph examiner, an attorney general, and a governor ---- inspired, in turn, by a pair of courageous men who refused to be victims and fought back.
“This is a compelling murder case. But more important, it is also a piece of history that deserves to be remembered. It is a piece of Florida history. It is a piece of Southern history. And ultimately, it is a piece of American history.”

Full disclosure: Journalist Gene Miller was my husband. Lucky me!

[Cherie Hicks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I cannot remember my first memory of the Pitts-Lee case. But it's like it's always been there, which is hard to explain, considering it was based on a murder in Port St. Joe when I was 4 and growing up in Vernon, more than 60 miles away.

I can't imagine that my white family talked about the case, yet when I read this book, it seems like everyone was talking about how two Black men robbed a Mojo station in Port St. Joe in 1963 and killed the two white and likeable attendants, Grover Floyd and Jesse Burkett. It was the scariest thing for white Southern folks to consider that their worst fears were happening: Black men were going to kill them.

I don't know how I knew that those unfounded fears were rooted in a hatred that has taken me a lifetime to grasp but will still never understand. But I did.

I was in high school when the two wrongfully accused men, Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee, were finally released after having served 12 years on death row for murders they didn't commit. It took a pardon from a governor to make it happen because the courts were so slow and the system a failure. It took more years for a stingy legislature to give them monetary damages

What I didn't know until I read “From Death Row to Freedom: The Struggle for Racial Justice in the Pitts-Lee Case” was the damning role The News-Herald, my first employer out of journalism school, played in keeping these innocent men in prison.

I cried more than once.

The book drags in places because it's written by a lawyer – why I give it 4 stars, not 5. But Phillip Hubbart shows step by step how deep-seated racism by Bay County Sheriff Doc Daffin, Fred Turner (a renowned criminal lawyer who later became a circuit judge), prosecutors, deputies, jailers and so many white men in power terrorized the accused, their families, their alibis, that Pitts and Lee wound up confessing just to make the torture go away. They were beaten and their families threatened by the law. Their witnesses were kept in jail for a month without charges. The two men were sentenced to death A MONTH after they were arrested, largely due to a horrible attorney, Fred Turner, and the suppression of evidence by the prosecutor and other law officers.

This happened in my lifetime. I knew Fred Turner and Judge Fitzpatrick; I didn't know they had turned their backs on justice as they went on to have lauded careers in the “justice system.”

I'm sorry I didn't know the details earlier. I'm sorry that I have said the terror that is happening in Minnesota today, the case after case in recent years of police brutality with impunity against Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Eric Garner, et al, is not the America I know. It is the America I should have known and it has been since its founding.

We must know our history, our REAL history, or we will keep repeating it over and over. We must demand better from the leaders or get new ones.

[Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Professor Hubbart was my professor for 4th Amendment Search and Seizure in 2004. I remember him being a very humble man. In retrospect, I should have done more research into his background other than knowing that he was a judge on the Third District Court of Appeal.

This book was a wonderful recounting of his time and efforts to exonerate Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee of crimes they didn't commit. This book demonstrates the passion and tenacity of numerous people who fought tirelessly to fight racial injustice. These true stories of wrongful convictions are uplifting because it shows the commitment of people like Hubbart; simultaneously, it's disheartening to read about the gross injustices by law enforcement and win at all costs mentality of certain prosecutors.

Professor Hubbart makes the reader feel like they're inside the courtroom witnessing all aspects of the trial with his focus on pertinent aspects of the transcript.

[Janice Nolin · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is the worst thing that could happen to you? Lose your job? Lose your home? Lose loved ones — fiancé, spouse, parents, child?? Lose your reputation and the trust of all those you know? What if you effectively lose all of these things with the added threat of losing your life? What if someone else commits murder and you are convicted simply because you are in the wrong place at the wrong time and you are, inconveniently, the wrong race?

Could you emerge from this ordeal without hatred and animosity?

This book chronicles this real-life situation in the lives of two young Southern black men. It details how fellow humans demean and fail them, and how other human beings encourage and save them. It shows that the American justice system simultaneously has great weakness and strength.

This book is both factual and meticulously documented and at the same time occasionally stretches the boundaries of belief.

For anyone who appreciates a good story, this is a must read. For any student of Southern U S history, this is a must read. For anyone concerned about racial injustice, this is a must read. This nonfiction, “true crime”, legal thriller, is a must read.

(For full disclosure, I assisted with some research for this book. I expected it to be a good read, but the final product exceeded my expectations. I hope someone important and powerful in the film industry is introduced to the book and can turn it into a film that does it justice!!)