Miami judge denies hearing request and stay of execution for Diaz

Miami judge denies hearing request and stay of execution for Diaz
December 1, 2006
http://www.boston.com/news/local/connecticut/articles/2006/12/01/miami_judge_denies_hearing_request_and_stay_of_execution_for_diaz

Miami judge denies hearing request and stay of execution for Diaz


MIAMI --A Florida circuit judge on Friday denied a death row inmate's request to reconsider testimony by a key witness who later recanted.

ngel Diaz, 55, who is scheduled to be put to death this month, also was denied a stay of execution, said Suzanne Myers Keffer, Diaz's attorney.

Diaz, who escaped from a Connecticut jail 25 years ago, is scheduled to die Dec. 13 for the fatal shooting of a Miami topless club manager in 1979.

Another inmate at the Miami-Dade County Jail, Ralph Gajus, testified at his 1984 trial that Diaz, who spoke only in broken English, used hand signs to imply he was the triggerman.

The Florida Supreme Court voted 5-2 Wednesday to send his murder case back to the trial court to consider a recently obtained sworn statement from Gajus, saying that he lied on the witness stand.

Gajus said in the statement that he was angry with Diaz for leaving him out of a plan to escape, and that police promised to help him with his case if he testified. Gajus later was sentenced to 20 years in prison for second-degree murder.

Keffer declined further comment. Diaz has until Monday to appeal the trial court's ruling, and he also has appealed to the high court on other grounds.

He was previously convicted of another murder in his native Puerto Rico, and had escaped from prisons there and in Connecticut.

In 1981, he escaped from the Hartford Correctional Center by holding one guard at knifepoint while another was beaten as he and three other inmates escaped, according to court records.