After nearly 17 years in prison, including 4 1/2 years on Death Row, Sonia Jacobs won her freedom on Friday by pleading guilty to second-degree murder charges in the 1976 shooting deaths of two police officers in Deerfield Beach.
Jacobs, 45, a cause celebre for a coterie of media and movie people who think she was wrongly convicted, broke down in tears after Broward Circuit Judge Howard M. Zeidwig ended the hearing.
She had won a new trial in February, overturning her conviction on two counts of first-degree murder that carried a life sentence with no possibility of parole for at least 25 years.
On Friday, Jacobs was sentenced to time served after she entered “pleas of convenience” to two counts of second-degree murder and one count of kidnapping.
That means Jacobs does not concede she is guilty, but recognizes it is in her best interests to plead guilty.
State Attorney Michael Satz said he agreed to the plea bargain because Walter Rhodes, the chief witness against Jacobs, has recanted his testimony at least three times since the first trial.
Rhodes was with Jacobs and her boyfriend, Jesse Tafero, the night of the shootings. In exchange for not receiving the death penalty, Rhodes testified for the state and said Jacobs and Tafero were the shooters.
“We’re concerned about how his credibility would be 17 years later,” Satz said. Rhodes is still serving a life sentence.
The defense, on the other hand, feared that Jacobs could be convicted again at the new trial.
“We do recognize that they (prosecutors) can prove the evidence at the trial,” said her lead defense attorney, Jose Quinon of Miami.
Jacobs has spent all of the past 16 years and 233 days behind bars, mostly at Broward Correctional Institution. She was released on Friday night from the Broward County Jail.
“I’m going home,” Jacobs said, crying as she bounded down the steps of the jail just before 7 p.m. A grin on her face, Jacobs shouted: “Enough is enough.”
Jacobs will stay with Micki Dickoff, a documentary film producer from Los Angeles.
Jacobs and Tafero were convicted of the Feb. 20, 1976, shooting deaths of a Florida state trooper, Phillip A. Black, and an off-duty Canadian constable, Donald R. Irwin, on Interstate 95 in Deerfield Beach.
Tafero, who was carrying the gun that killed the officers when he was arrested the same day, was executed in 1990. Jacobs, who bought the gun and registered it in her name, also received the death sentence.
“I’m absolutely convinced she didn’t shoot,” Dickoff said. “When the first shot went off, Sonia bent over to cover the two bodies of her children. The only testimony that said she was the shooter was Rhodes’.”
She was the only woman on Death Row until 1981, when her sentence was commuted to life.
“I have a lot of people to thank,” Jacobs said. “My friends, my attorneys and the family members of Black and Constable Irwin.”
The victims’ family members had agreed to the plea bargain.
In February this year, a federal appeals court in Atlanta ordered a new trial for her, ruling that evidence was withheld from her attorneys at trial.
The plea agreement came during the midst of a controversial hearing in which Quinon was seeking to have Satz removed as prosecutor in Jacobs’ retrial, scheduled for January.
Satz prosecuted Jacobs in 1976, but Quinon accused Satz of a conflict of interest because Satz’s chief assistant, Ralph Ray, was the defense attorney for Rhodes.
Satz said he had notified the families of Black and Irwin about the plea agreement.
“No one was real happy with it, as I’m not,” Satz said. “But they agree with me that, in the final analysis, this is the best disposition of a case that’s lasted 17 years.”
A CHRONOLOGY OF THE JACOBS CASE
— February 1976: Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Phillip A. Black and Canadian Constable Donald R. Irwin are murdered on Interstate 95 in Deerfield Beach. Sonia Jacobs, then 28, her boyfriend, Jesse Tafero, and one of Tafero’s friends, Walter Rhodes, are charged with the murders. Tafero is an ex-convict on parole for robbery with intent to rape. Jacobs’ two young children, Eric and Tina, are with her when the killings take place.
— July 1976: Tafero, accused of being the trigger man, is convicted and sentenced to death; Rhodes turns state’s evidence and is the key witness.
— August 1976: Jacobs is convicted and sentenced to death. Rhodes pleads guilty to two counts of second-degree murder and one count of kidnapping. He is sentenced to life in prison.
— February 1977: In Rhodes’ first recantation, he tells prison inmates that he, not Jacobs and Tafero, did the shooting and that he lied to avoid the electric chair.
— May 1977: Rhodes recants his recantation.
— November 1979: Rhodes again confesses to the killings, then recants.
— March 1981: Florida Supreme Court resentences Jacobs — then the only woman on Death Row in the United States — to life in prison with no parole for 25 years.
— September 1982: Another Rhodes confession and subsequent recantation.
— February 1986: A former cellmate of Jacobs, Brenda Isham, recants her testimony about Jacobs’ jailhouse confession. Isham says prosecutors pressured her into lying.
— May 1990: Tafero is executed.
— September 1991: Rhodes says his first story was true. Rhodes says they did the shooting, not him.
— February 1992: 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta orders a new trial for Jacobs. The court says the state was remiss in not showing Jacobs’ attorney a polygraph examiner’s summary of his conversation with Rhodes, which defense attorneys say is favorable to Jacobs. The appeals court also says the judge erred in letting the jury hear statements Jacobs made to police before she got an attorney.
— October: Jacobs pleads guilty to two counts of second-degree murder and one count of kidnapping in exchange for a sentence of time served. She was in prison for 16 years and 233 days.
