Tavares Hutchinson was sentenced to life in prison based on one man\u2019s claim that he robbed him of his wedding ring and gold necklace in 1999.<\/p>\n
The wedding ring was never found. Neither was a gun. But a Broward jury convicted the 23-year-old of robbery with a weapon, a crime he has always maintained he did not commit. Then, about midnight Friday, after more than 26 years behind bars, the now-49-year-old walked out of the Broward Main Jail as a free man.<\/p>\n
Asked how he was feeling Saturday afternoon, Hutchinson told the South Florida Sun Sentinel, \u201cWinning.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just happy to be free,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
For years, Hutchinson had fought his sentence from prison unsuccessfully. Then, in February 2024, he asked the Broward State Attorney\u2019s Office Conviction Review Unit to review his case. An investigation between the unit and the Innocence Project of Florida found \u201csignificant evidence both undermining the integrity of the conviction and pointing to Tavares\u2019 factual innocence,\u201d the nonprofit said in a news release Friday.<\/p>\n
The Innocence Project had asked for Hutchinson\u2019s conviction to be fully vacated, but ultimately reached an agreement with the Broward State Attorney\u2019s Office to have him sentenced to time served and immediately released. On Friday, a Broward judge resentenced Hutchinson.<\/p>\n
\u201cA man who otherwise was going to die in prison, based on his sentence, is now able to live a full and productive life in society and actually be able to be an asset to our society,\u201d Brandon Scheck, IPF\u2019s legal director and Hutchinson\u2019s attorney, told the Sun Sentinel Saturday. \u201cI think that\u2019s really awesome and significant.\u201d<\/p>\n
An alleged robbery<\/p>\n
Hutchinson\u2019s years behind bars stem from an alleged encounter on a June night in 1999, when a man named Dan Sharpe was walking home from a Narcotics Anonymous meeting in Fort Lauderdale shortly after marrying his wife the same evening, according to a Conviction Review Unit memo completed in September.<\/p>\n
About 10:30 p.m., he told police he was approached by an armed Black man who placed a gun to the small of his back and told him to \u201cgive it up.\u201d After Sharpe said he had no money, the man took his wedding ring, according to what he told police at the time. He later added that the man also took his gold necklace.<\/p>\n
A \u201cBe On the Lookout\u201d was issued over the robbery. A few hours later, police stopped a car four miles away on suspicion of a DUI, according to the review unit\u2019s memo. Hutchinson was the passenger; another man was driving. During the stop, the police officer said he saw a gold necklace in one of the car door\u2019s pockets and matched Hutchinson with the suspect from the robbery BOLO, despite his height, weight and clothing not fitting the description.<\/p>\n
The police officer took the gold chain, went to Sharpe\u2019s home and asked him if it was the same necklace, according to the memo. Sharpe said it was. The officer then brought Sharpe to the scene of the traffic stop and asked him if Hutchinson was the man who robbed him. Sharpe said he was. That was enough for police to arrest Hutchinson, who denied robbing Sharpe.<\/p>\n
Sharpe was the sole witness in the case, and would later recant his testimony. The memo noted that Sharpe has \u201crepeatedly demonstrated unreliability as a witness.\u201d<\/p>\n
In January of 2000, a jury convicted Hutchinson after about a half-hour of deliberation.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough we have transcripts of the proceeding, we will never know what the jury\u2019s reasoning was behind the conviction,\u201d prosecutors wrote in the memo. \u201cThey were not interviewed; they were not even polled.\u201d<\/p>\n
A judge sentenced Hutchinson to life in prison, which he would later contest as an illegal sentence. The severe sentence stemmed from Hutchinson\u2019s status as a repeat offender. He had prior convictions including stealing a purse from a car as a minor, which he confessed to at the scene; possession of cocaine; possession of cannabis; and driving with a suspended license.<\/p>\n
The \u201cmost serious of his crimes\u201d occurred when Hutchinson was still a minor, prosecutors wrote in the memo. He and three of his friends robbed a Little Caesar\u2019s with a BB gun. Afterward, Hutchinson was the only one among his friends to be \u201cfully forthright and remorseful,\u201d confessing and apologizing, the memo said.<\/p>\n
In the years following his January 2000 sentencing, Hutchinson filed a series of unsuccessful appeals from prison. Over the last 26 years, he said he sometimes lost hope that he would ever get out.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to train myself to imagine myself free,\u201d Hutchinson said Saturday. He would lie down on his bunk and picture himself hugging his lawyer or getting released. \u201cIf I would\u2019ve sat in there continuing to imagine myself in prison, I would still be in prison.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018I sent the wrong man to prison\u2019<\/p>\n
Several discrepancies in the evidence, many of which were brought to light recently, undermined the case against Hutchinson and suggested his innocence, according to the Innocence Project.<\/p>\n
The only evidence that tied Hutchinson to the alleged crime was Sharpe\u2019s \u201cmisidentification\u201d of both him and the necklace Sharpe said was stolen, according to the prosecutors\u2019 memo.<\/p>\n
Sharpe was actively using drugs, had memory issues and \u201cregularly said things that were not true,\u201d prosecutors said in the memo. The police officer had written in the original report that Sharpe seemed \u201cvery interested in being driven home so that the police could \u2018verify to his wife that he was robbed,\u2019 implying that his report might be motivated by his need for a cover story,\u201d prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
Sharpe ended up serving time in prison himself in the years after Hutchinson\u2019s conviction and was designated a \u201cmentally disordered sex offender,\u201d prosecutors wrote. In a 2002 case against him, he was accused of forging a letter from a victim recanting her testimony. Then, while in prison in Arizona in 2020, Sharpe wrote two affidavits asserting that his claims about Hutchinson were incorrect, according to the memo.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know in my heart that I sent the wrong man to prison,\u201d Sharpe wrote in one of the affidavits.<\/p>\n
When attorneys with both the Conviction Review Unit\u00a0and the Innocence Project of Florida interviewed Sharpe this March, he again recanted his initial claims about Hutchinson. He also contradicted his original account of the robbery. His recent recounting had \u201cmajor discrepancies,\u201d including about where the alleged robbery happened and how many people were present, prosecutors wrote, adding, \u201cboth versions of the story of the robbery cannot be true.\u201d<\/p>\n
Evidence didn\u2019t match<\/p>\n
The stolen chain Dan Sharpe described did not match the chain collected from Hutchinson as evidence, according to the memo, and the jury never learned that Sharpe had described a completely different necklace during his testimony at trial.<\/p>\n
Sharpe said the chain was uncommon, gold and silver with \u201cGucci-style links.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is in evidence is a very ordinary chain,\u201d prosecutors wrote in the memo. \u201cIt appears to be a Figaro-style chain, which is an extremely popular style of chain \u2026 It is completely gold in color, the clasp is inscribed with \u201914k\u2019 and it is not in any way silver.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hutchinson also did not match the description of the robber: a 6-foot-tall, 200-pound man with gold teeth wearing a white shirt, a white hat and dark pants. At the time, Hutchinson was 5-feet-10-inches tall and weighed 165 pounds. He also did not match the alleged robber\u2019s age or skin complexion, and while Sharpe said the robber had only some gold teeth, Hutchinson had a complete set, six on top and six on bottom, the memo said.<\/p>\n
Perhaps most notably, Hutchinson has a \u201cpronounced shoulder deformity\u201d from childhood scoliosis surgery, but Sharpe did not note anything similar in his description, according to the memo.<\/p>\n
Police also found no weapon, hat or wedding ring in the car where Hutchinson was a passenger. They would never recover the alleged wedding ring or gun.<\/p>\n
Sharpe identified Hutchinson as the robber during a \u201cshow-up,\u201d where a victim or witness is shown only one person to identify. And police presented Hutchinson to Sharpe after telling him that Hutchinson had the missing necklace he described.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo defense motion to suppress the identification was ever filed, so we will never know how the court may have analyzed these factors,\u201d the memo said. \u201cThese issues were never fully explored in front of the jury, so we will never know if going through this analysis would have led to a different verdict.\u201d<\/p>\n
The man who was driving Hutchinson that night, Paulonzeo Vickers, told the review unit in an interview this April that Hutchinson had obtained his gold necklace days earlier from a man at a gas station in exchange for drugs. The jury never got to hear Vickers\u2019 side of the story, according to the memo. No attorney contacted him until the Innocence Project of Florida did this year.<\/p>\n
One of the case\u2019s initial prosecutors, Maria Schneider, wrote in an Oct. 5, 1999, memo about the concerns she had early on, calling it \u201cone of the worst cases I have had in a while.\u201d But once a detective did a follow-up investigation and interview with Sharpe, she felt it was enough to move forward, according to the memo.<\/p>\n
Despite the fact that police never recovered a gun, Hutchinson was convicted of robbery with a weapon. Jurors expressed confusion related to the enhanced charge at trial but never received clarification, according to the memo. If their questions had been answered, Hutchinson instead could have been found guilty of the lesser charge of robbery.<\/p>\n
\u2018Not an exoneration\u2019<\/p>\n
Advocates with the Innocence Project of Florida say Hutchinson never committed the robbery and should have had his conviction vacated. But after the Conviction Review Unit revisited his case, prosecutors opted not to vacate it, instead agreeing to sentence him for time already served.<\/p>\n
This will leave the conviction on Hutchinson\u2019s record. He cannot seek compensation from the state for the time he spent behind bars, something only those deemed wrongfully convicted are able to do, Scheck said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are thankful that Tavares is coming home after more than 26 years in prison for something he clearly didn\u2019t do,\u201d the Innocence Project said in the release. \u201cYet, we are concerned he remains wrongfully convicted despite a full reinvestigation of the case that undermined the State\u2019s already weak case and now points squarely toward his innocence.\u201d<\/p>\n
The State Attorney\u2019s Office said that it opted not to overturn Hutchinson\u2019s conviction after reviewing \u201cthe strengths and weaknesses of the case.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was not an exoneration,\u201d Paula McMahon, a spokesperson for the State Attorney\u2019s Office, said in a statement. \u201cAfter reviewing all of the facts and circumstances and the strengths and weaknesses of the case and consulting with the listed victim, witnesses, and other parties, prosecutors decided that it was in the interests of justice to modify Mr. Hutchinson\u2019s sentence to the 26 years, five months, and 24 days he has served in Florida\u2019s state prison system for the robbery with a weapon and resisting without violence convictions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite not getting the conviction vacated, both Hutchinson and Scheck said they were thankful to the State Attorney\u2019s Office for revisiting the case in the first place.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m humble,\u201d Hutchinson said Saturday. \u201cI\u2019m appreciative of the Conviction Review Unit, and them giving me an opportunity to be free. I have no hard feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n
He spoke from the car, where Innocence Project employees were driving him to Tallahassee. He will begin staying at a prisoner reentry program there, which he opted to do. The program helps those released from prison after long sentences to reintegrate into society and find employment.<\/p>\n
Hutchinson said he plans to go to technical school, then possibly get a job in electricity or HVAC. Meanwhile, Scheck will continue to work on Hutchinson\u2019s case in the hopes that more evidence will ultimately exonerate him.<\/p>\n
Hutchinson is optimistic that it will.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we speak, I\u2019m imagining being exonerated,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tavares Hutchinson was sentenced to life in prison based on one man\u2019s claim that he robbed him of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[506,112,28,249,251,250,114,115,109],"class_list":["post-48023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-broward-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-florida","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news","tag-latest-headlines","tag-news","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}