James Joseph Richardson: Wrongful Conviction and Exoneration

James Joseph Richardson’s wrongful conviction is one of the most notorious in Florida history: a Black migrant citrus worker sentenced to death by an all-white DeSoto County jury in 1968 for fatally poisoning his seven children, then freed 21 years later after a special investigation led by Miami-Dade State Attorney Janet Reno documented suppressed evidence, coerced jailhouse testimony, and an alternate suspect the sheriff refused to investigate. Richardson spent nearly five of those years on death row. He was released on April 25, 1989, and died in Wichita, Kansas, on September 16, 2023, at age 87.¹

What Happened to the Richardson Children

On October 25, 1967, James Richardson and his wife left their Arcadia home to work in a nearby orange grove. Their seven children, ranging in age from about three to ten, were left in the care of neighbor and babysitter Betsy Reese, who lived in the apartment upstairs and shared a common porch with the family.² That day the children ate a lunch of rice, beans, and hogshead prepared by their mother and served by Reese.³

Within hours the children were convulsing and vomiting. Six died the same day; the seventh died shortly after.⁴ The food had been laced with massive amounts of parathion, a highly toxic insecticide. A bag of parathion turned up in a locked shed on the Richardson property. It was found by Reese herself, who walked to the shed the morning after multiple police searches had failed to locate it.²

How Richardson Was Convicted

The DeSoto County Sheriff’s Office, led by Sheriff Frank Cline, focused on Richardson as the sole suspect from the outset. Investigators never searched Reese’s residence and maintained she was not a suspect.²

State Attorney Frank Schaub prosecuted the case at trial on May 27, 1968. The State’s theory was that Richardson had poisoned his children for insurance money. That theory was false on its face. The prosecution held sworn statements from insurance agent Gerald Purvis confirming no policy had ever been purchased, that Richardson knew the children were uninsured, and that Purvis’s visit to the family had been unsolicited. None of that was disclosed to the defense.²

The State also called three jailhouse informants who claimed Richardson had confessed while in the Arcadia jail. Later investigation established that at least one, James Weaver, had been beaten by a sheriff’s deputy known as “Bad Boy” Boone and coerced into providing false testimony.⁵ The all-white jury convicted Richardson and sentenced him to death.⁶ After the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1972 ruling on capital punishment, his sentence was commuted to 25 years to life.⁷

The Misconduct Behind the Verdict

A later review of the prosecutor’s own files documented seventeen instances of the knowing use of perjured testimony and twenty items of evidence withheld from the defense in violation of a court disclosure order.⁵ Among the suppressed materials were pre-trial statements in which Richardson told investigators he believed Reese had poisoned the children and explained her possible motive in detail.

Members of the prosecution team privately acknowledged the problem. Assistant State Attorney Don Horn noted that the physical evidence indicated the poison had been introduced into the food after Richardson had already left for work that morning. Another assistant prosecutor, John Treadwell, was quoted as having said, “We framed an innocent man.”²

The Suspect the Sheriff Ignored

Betsy Reese had a violent criminal history the jury never heard about. She had previously been convicted of murdering a former husband and served time for the killing, and was also suspected of poisoning a second husband.² According to defense attorney John Robinson, Reese carried a personal grudge against the Richardson family. Her third husband had left her for one of Mrs. Richardson’s relatives and never returned, and Reese reportedly swore revenge.⁸

She had served the food, had access to the home, was the last adult with the children, and produced the parathion from a shed police had already searched. The prosecution declined to call her at trial, claiming she was not mentally competent, and Sheriff Cline maintained she was not a suspect.⁸

Two employees of the Hardee Manor Nursing Home, where Reese was later a patient, provided affidavits stating she had confessed to killing the Richardson children. One employee, Belinda Frazier, said Reese confessed more than 100 times between 1985 and 1987. Reese’s daughters disputed the credibility of those statements, saying their mother had Alzheimer’s disease and could not recognize her own children.⁸ Reese was never charged in connection with the deaths.

How Richardson Was Freed

Attorney Mark Lane drove the exoneration effort. Over more than a year he interviewed witnesses including Reese, the insurance agent, jurors, and the former Arcadia chief of police, and obtained files from the State Attorney’s office that he described as the “anatomy of a frame-up.”² Lane published his findings in the 1970 book Arcadia, arguing that Schaub and Cline had railroaded Richardson through manufactured testimony, withheld evidence, and racial prejudice.⁹ With activist Dick Gregory and journalist Steve Jaffe, Lane also ran a national media campaign that generated more than 11,000 letters to the governor demanding a special prosecutor. A Seminole Tribune investigation surfaced suppressed documents, including a hidden deposition, and delivered them to Governor Bob Martinez.¹⁰

Martinez appointed Janet Reno, then Miami-Dade State Attorney, as special prosecutor. Reno concluded that the charges of suppressed evidence and suborned perjury were true. Her verdict was blunt: “He should never have been charged.”¹⁰ She filed a nolle prosequi, dropping all charges. On April 25, 1989, after a daylong hearing in Arcadia, Circuit Judge Clifton Kelly vacated the conviction and death sentence, finding the State had denied Richardson a fair trial. He walked out of prison the same day.⁷

What Happened to Those Responsible

Frank Schaub never accepted that the conviction was wrong. As of 1989 he continued to insist on Richardson’s guilt, telling reporters, “I am just as convinced today of the defendant’s guilt as I was 20 years ago.” He filed a 200-page document attacking Richardson’s character and a $35 million defamation suit against Lane and fellow defense attorney Ellis Rubin.¹¹ Schaub retired in 1989 and died on February 23, 1995, at age 73.¹²

After Richardson’s release, a former sheriff’s deputy corroborated reports that witnesses had been beaten by police into giving false testimony, admitting to both the Seminole Tribune and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement that he had beaten witnesses at the sheriff’s direction.¹⁰

The 25-Year Fight for Compensation

Richardson’s fight for compensation lasted nearly as long as his imprisonment. Florida required a claimant to prove actual innocence, and Richardson could not meet that bar because physical evidence from the 1967 case had been lost or destroyed over the intervening decades.¹³

In the closing minutes of its 2014 session, the Florida Legislature passed a bill narrowly adjusting that proof requirement so Richardson could apply under the state’s 2008 Victims of Wrongful Incarceration Compensation Act, which provides $50,000 for each year of wrongful imprisonment. The change made him eligible to seek up to $2 million.⁶ The bill went to Governor Rick Scott.¹⁴ According to filmmaker Ty Flowers, Richardson received his initial payment under the act in 2016.¹⁵

Richardson was under no illusion that money settled the account. “It’s not ever going to be over,” he said. “It can’t pay back what I lost.”⁶

Life After Prison

Richardson settled in Wichita, Kansas, and lived there for the rest of his life. His case was revisited in Mark Lane’s 2015 book Arcadia Revisited and in the 2016 documentary Time Simply Passes, directed by Ty Flowers.¹⁵ He died on September 16, 2023, in Wichita. A funeral service was held on September 26, 2023, at the Jackson Mortuary Chapel.¹

1
Jackson Mortuary. Obituary for James Richardson
2
Florida Legislature. Capital Cases: James Joseph Richardson
3
The Ledger. Case of 7 Killings Is Back
4
Florida State University College of Law. Richardson v. State, Respondent’s Filing
5
Florida State University College of Law. Richardson v. State, Reply to State’s Response
6
Prison Legal News. Florida Allows Compensation for Wrongfully Convicted Man 25 Years After Release
7
History.com. A Father Is Exonerated After 21 Years
8
Orlando Sentinel. Dad Still Denies Poisoning 7 Kids
9
Los Angeles Times. Father Freed After 21 Years in Prison
10
Seminole Tribune. James Richardson Seeks Relief From Florida Legislators
11
Orlando Sentinel. Fighting Back vs. Richardson: Ex-Prosecutor Defends Reputation
12
Tampa Bay Times. Ex-State Attorney Frank Schaub Dies
13
Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Bill to Compensate James Richardson Moves Forward
14
WFSU. Wrongfully Imprisoned Man Now Eligible for Compensation After Last-Minute Legislative Move
15
WGCU. Documentary on Wrongfully Convicted Arcadia Man at FMFF