By Andrea Fanta
Tallahassee, Florida - A Cuban national convicted of a 1982 Key West rape will be released after DNA evidence proved he did not commit the crime, prosecutors said on Monday.
Orlando Bosquete, who escaped from prison twice, once for 10 years, has been serving a 55-year sentence after he was convicted of breaking into the victim's home in 1982 and raping her.
At least 177 inmates have been released nationally in recent years after being cleared by DNA evidence.
Bosquete, 51, was arrested shortly after the assault when the victim, from six metres away, identified him as her attacker and another man as his accomplice as she sat in the back seat of a police car. The two men had been picked up at a convenience store.
Matthew Helmerich, spokesperson for Monroe County State Attorney Mark Kohl, said that prosecutors would go to court on Tuesday and ask that the conviction and sentence be dismissed. Bosquete would then be released.
He said DNA tests not available two decades ago showed Bosquete was not the rapist.
"He'll be a free man," Helmerich said.
Bosquete is being represented by the Innocence Project, a non-profit group based in New York.
Spokesperson Eric Ferrero declined specific comment on the case.
Federal immigration officials had no immediate comment on Monday about Bosquete, who entered the country illegally.
Under current US policy, adopted in the 1990s, almost all Cuban immigrants who reach dry land are allowed to remain.
The other man, Pablo Cazola, pleaded guilty to burglary, and state prison records show he was paroled in 1985.
Helmerich said victims and witnesses were usually asked to pick suspects from a line-up and he did not know why it was not done in this case.
Kirk Zuelch, who was the state attorney when Bosquete was prosecuted, said on Monday that he did not remember the case well enough to comment.
Becky Herrin, spokesperson for the Monroe County sheriff's office, said nobody else would be sought in the case because the statute of limitations had expired.
Officials have not released the name of
the victim, nor would they say whether she had been notified that Bosquete was not her attacker.
Bosquete first escaped in 1985 from Glades Correctional Institution in Palm Beach County. He was re-arrested in 1995, only to escape again three months later from a Miami-Dade County jail.
Officials recaptured him a year later. Charges surrounding Bosquete's first escape will probably be dropped, and Bosquete has served the time he got for his second getaway, Helmerich said.
- The Innocence Project: www.innocenceproject.org.