Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin: Death Row Exoneration and Civil Suit

The Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin wrongful conviction is one of the most consequential capital exoneration cases in Florida history. Aguirre-Jarquin, a Honduran immigrant who worked as a dishwasher in Altamonte Springs, spent 14 years in prison — more than a decade of them on death row — for the 2004 stabbing deaths of his neighbors Cheryl Williams and her mother Carol Bareis. On November 5, 2018, prosecutors dropped all charges after DNA testing excluded him from the crime scene, the fingerprint analysis used against him was discredited, and Cheryl Williams’s own daughter, Samantha Williams, was reported to have confessed to the killings on multiple occasions.¹²

The Murders and How Aguirre-Jarquin Became a Suspect

On June 17, 2004, Cheryl Williams and Carol Bareis were found stabbed to death inside their home in Altamonte Springs, a suburb of Orlando in Seminole County. Cheryl Williams had been stabbed 129 times. Carol Bareis had been stabbed twice.¹

Aguirre-Jarquin lived next door. He told police he had gone inside, discovered the bodies, and tried to help the women, but did not call authorities because he was undocumented and feared deportation. He had fled Honduras roughly a year earlier after narcotics traffickers tried to force him into their gang.³

Suspicion fell on him in part because Samantha Williams — Cheryl’s daughter and Carol’s granddaughter — told police she had a “gut feeling” he was the attacker. He was arrested for tampering with evidence and then indicted on June 25, 2004, on first-degree murder charges.¹

The 2006 Trial and Non-Unanimous Death Sentence

On February 28, 2006, a jury convicted Aguirre-Jarquin of two counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary with assault or battery. The state’s case rested on a handful of items.

Latent print examiner Donna Birks of the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office identified a fingerprint on a bloody chef’s knife found near the scene as Aguirre-Jarquin’s. Of 67 bloody shoe impressions collected at the scene, 64 were linked to him. Prosecutors told jurors that blood on his clothing was spatter from the attack itself. And Samantha Williams and her then-boyfriend Mark Van Sandt provided an alibi, testifying that Williams had been with Van Sandt the night of the killings.¹

The jury recommended death by non-unanimous votes: 7–5 for the killing of Cheryl Williams and 9–3 for the killing of Carol Bareis. Judge O.H. Eaton imposed two death sentences.² The Florida Supreme Court affirmed on direct appeal in 2009, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined review.⁴

The Evidence That Unraveled the Conviction

The Innocence Project joined the case in 2011, brought in by attorneys from the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel’s office. Testing was pursued on more than 80 crime-scene items and presented at an evidentiary hearing in 2013.¹

DNA That Pointed Elsewhere

None of the DNA recovered from the crime scene belonged to Aguirre-Jarquin. Samantha Williams’s DNA, by contrast, was identified in eight locations inside the trailer, in places the defense argued were consistent with the movements of an attacker. One of her bloodstains sat on a kitchen floor that had been mopped only hours before the murders. Others appeared in a bathroom within inches of the victims’ blood.⁵⁶ The Florida Supreme Court later noted that the state had “failed to find” this evidence at the time of the original prosecution because investigators had tested only the murder weapon and Aguirre-Jarquin’s clothing.⁴

A crime scene expert also testified that the blood on his clothing was transfer blood from trying to help the victims, not the attack spatter the jury had been told about.⁵

A Discredited Fingerprint Analyst

The fingerprint that helped convict him was made by an analyst whose work later collapsed under review. After a coworker flagged concerns, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigated Donna Birks and identified seven errors across her caseload — six identifications made from prints lacking sufficient detail, and one where she identified the wrong person entirely. Birks resigned in June 2007 after being told she would be fired. Seminole County Sheriff Don Eslinger said she had “absolutely no credibility as a latent-print examiner.”⁷

In Aguirre-Jarquin’s case, a post-conviction review by an independent consultant and the FDLE concluded the print on the murder weapon was impossible to identify.¹

Samantha Williams’s Reported Confessions

The defense also gathered testimony from witnesses who said Samantha Williams had confessed to the murders on separate occasions. Christine Laravuso said that at a neighborhood gathering in March 2012, Williams’s demeanor changed and she stated she had killed her mother and grandmother. Nichole Casey said Williams told her twice that “the demon in her head made her do it” while making stabbing motions toward her own chest. A neighbor testified that Williams, when asked to leave their property, replied that she was not afraid of them because she had killed her mother and grandmother.⁶

At a 2013 hearing, Williams acknowledged severe mental illness and said she had been involuntarily committed under Florida’s Baker Act at least 60 times since age 14. She dismissed the DNA findings, suggesting the blood may have come from slapping a mosquito.⁶ She has never been charged in connection with the killings.

The Florida Supreme Court Orders a New Trial

On October 27, 2016, the Florida Supreme Court unanimously vacated the convictions and death sentences and ordered a new trial. The court found that the DNA evidence and Williams’s confessions, together, met the standard for newly discovered evidence. The DNA “tending to exculpate Aguirre but inculpate Samantha substantially weakens the case against Aguirre,” the court wrote, and the combined evidence raised “reasonable doubt as to his culpability.” It also held Williams’s out-of-court confessions admissible as substantive evidence under Chambers v. Mississippi.⁴

Retrial and Dismissal

Seminole County State Attorney Phil Archer chose to retry the case and again pursue the death penalty. Archer argued the state still had “sufficient evidence,” pointing to victims’ blood on Aguirre-Jarquin’s clothing and his failure to report the deaths, and dismissed Williams’s confessions by citing her “significant mental health issues.”⁸

Retired Judge O.H. Eaton, who had originally sentenced Aguirre-Jarquin to death, publicly opposed the retrial. “The evidence I heard during the trial substantiated the verdict,” he said. “The evidence I’ve heard now does not.” He told the Orlando Sentinel that if he had known then what he knew now, he probably would have overturned the jury’s verdict, and called the case the “poster child for why the death penalty is flawed.”⁹

The retrial did not go smoothly. A mistrial was declared in March 2018 during jury selection after jurors were found researching the case online. A second jury selection began in October 2018. By then, the defense had a sworn affidavit from Nicole Bouzigard, Mark Van Sandt’s wife, contradicting Van Sandt’s original alibi testimony by stating that Samantha Williams had left the home on the night of the murders.⁵¹

On November 5, 2018, with jury selection still underway, prosecutors dismissed all charges. Archer said the decision was “based upon new evidence that materially affects the credibility of a critical State witness.”² Aguirre-Jarquin became the 164th person exonerated from death row in the United States and the 28th in Florida.⁵

After the Charges Were Dropped

Aguirre-Jarquin did not walk out a free man that day. The Department of Homeland Security placed an immigration hold on him because he was undocumented. He was released on a federal immigration court bond, and his lawyers filed for asylum. During the aborted retrial, potential jurors had been overheard discussing his nationality and immigration status.¹¹⁰

State Compensation Denied on a Timing Ruling

His attempt to obtain compensation under Florida’s wrongful incarceration statute, Chapter 961, was rejected on a technicality. Although the petition was filed within 90 days of his November 2018 release, the Circuit Court for the 18th Judicial Circuit ruled it untimely, holding that the 90-day clock had started when the Florida Supreme Court vacated the convictions in October 2016 — even though he remained imprisoned and facing retrial for more than two years after that.¹¹

Florida lawmakers filed special claims bills to override that outcome. Senate Bill 24 in 2020, filed by Representative Anna Eskamani and Senator Victor Torres, proposed $720,000 — roughly $50,000 for each year of wrongful incarceration — plus up to 120 credit hours of tuition and fees at Florida public colleges and universities.¹² A similar bill, SB 28, was filed in 2021 but withdrawn before introduction.¹³ Available records do not show that either bill became law.

Federal Civil Rights Lawsuit

In January 2020, Aguirre-Jarquin filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in the Middle District of Florida, Aguirre-Jarquin v. Seminole County, et al., No. 6:20-cv-00025. It named latent print examiner Donna Birks, lead homicide investigator Robert Hemmert, lead crime scene analyst Jacqueline Grossi, and Seminole County Sheriff Dennis Lemma in his official capacity. The claims included fabrication of evidence, malicious prosecution, and due process violations under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, along with a state-law claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress.³

The district court granted summary judgment for Hemmert on the evidence-withholding count and dismissed the claims against the Sheriff, but denied qualified immunity to Birks, Hemmert, and Grossi on several remaining counts. The individual defendants took an interlocutory appeal to the Eleventh Circuit, docketed as No. 23-10811, which indicated it would affirm in part and reverse in part.³

1
Innocence Project. Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin
2
Death Penalty Information Center. Clemente Aguirre Exonerated From Florida’s Death Row After DNA Implicates Prosecution Witness
3
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Aguirre-Jarquin v. Seminole County, No. 23-10811
4
FindLaw. Aguirre-Jarquin v. State
5
Southern Center for Human Rights. Clemente Aguirre Is the Nation’s 164th Death Row Exoneree
6
Orlando Sentinel. Someone Else’s Confession Got Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin Off Death Row
7
Orlando Sentinel. Fingerprint Scandal Costs Analyst Her Job
8
Innocence Project. Judge Speaks Out Against Aguirre-Jarquin Retrial
9
Death Penalty Information Center. As Capital Retrial Begins, Former Judge Says Defendant Should Not Be Convicted
10
Brennan Center for Justice. A Travesty of a Murder Case
11
Florida Phoenix. Compensation Claim Filed for Man Freed After 11 Years on Death Row
12
Florida Senate. SB 24 Bill Text
13
Florida Senate. SB 28