State drops murder charges against Dillon
VIERA (AP) – A Florida man whose 1981 murder conviction was called into question by DNA evidence will not face a new trial, prosecutors announced Wednesday.
Brevard County State Attorney Norman Wolfinger said that murder charges against William Dillon have been dropped.
The state said a retrial would mostly involve a reading of previous testimony. Nine witnesses from Dillon’s 1981 trial have died and another cannot testify because of medical problems.
Wolfinger said prosecutors concluded that a jury would not find the 49-year-old guilty “beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt.”
“It’s about time,” said Melissa Montle, an attorney for the Innocence Project of Florida. “It’s the right thing to do. They should have done it a long time ago.”
Montle said the state manufactured evidence and witnesses in prosecuting Dillon.
She cited a witness who lied on the stand, a dog handler who was later discredited, a jailhouse snitch and a half-blind witness.
“And that’s not even getting to the DNA, which was the whole reason we’re where we’re at,” Montle said.
Testing for DNA evidence wasn’t available during his original trial. New tests, paid for by the IPF, showed Dillon’s DNA was not found on a bloodstained yellow T-shirt presented as key evidence during his trial. The victim’s blood was on the shirt, along with the DNA of two other people, not Dillon.
A judge ordered a new trial for Dillon last month, and hew as released several days later on $100,000 bond. He left prison smiling and wearing a T-shirt with the words “not guilty” on it.
“When I first went behind the bars, I couldn’t believe that it happened,” Dillon said at the time. “And then I never thought it was gonna be corrected. But, boy, let me tell you how I feel right now at this moment in my life. This is something I thought about and dreamed about for years and years and years.”
Dillon wore a GPS monitoring bracelet and had a curfew while out on bond.