James Joseph Richardson (born December 26, 1935) is an African-American man who was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in 1968 for the October 1967 mass murder of his seven children. They died after eating a poisoned breakfast containing the organic phosphate pesticide parathion. At the time of the murders, Richardson was a migrant farm worker in Arcadia, Florida living with his wife Annie Mae Richardson and their children. At a trial in Fort Myers, Florida, the jury found him guilty of murdering the children and sentenced him to death. As a result of the United States Supreme Court's 1972 Furman v. Georgia decision finding the death penalty unconstitutional, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He was then exonerated in 1989 after 21 years, when his case was revisited by appointed Miami-Dade County prosecutor Janet Reno. Following Richardson's exoneration, the babysitter of the Richardson children, Bessie Reece, has been named as the key suspect. Reece died in 1993. In 2016 he began receiving compensation under a state law narrowly tailored to his case.
Born |
26 December 1935 (age 89)
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Zodiac | Capricorn |
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