Man exonerated after 16 years in prison gets nearly $1 million for ‘tragic consequences’ of wrongful conviction

Leonard Cure cannot get back the more than 16 years of his life he spent in prison for a crime there was reasonable doubt he committed all along. But now, three years after he was freed, there’s a further chance for him to start anew.

Gov. Ron DeSantis approved a claims bill Friday awarding Cure with $817,000 and educational benefits as relief for what the bill called the “tragic consequences” of his wrongful conviction nearly two decades ago. In 2020, Cure became the first man to be exonerated by the Broward State Attorney’s Office Conviction Review Unit, created the year before.

“We put aside our political differences and agreed that a man was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned, and that he should be compensated,” State Attorney Harold Pryor said in a prepared statement Friday.

Cure, 53, was convicted in 2004 of armed robbery with a firearm and aggravated assault with a firearm. There were issues with his case from the very beginning, a review by the unit and an independent panel of local attorneys found.

A Walgreens in Dania Beach was robbed at gunpoint on the morning of Nov. 10, 2003. The suspect fled shortly before 7:30 a.m. with $1,700, the review unit’s December 2020 memo said.

A shoddy identification by a store clerk was the only evidence tying Cure to the robbery, the memo said. The clerk and the store manager were the only ones there when the robber forced his way into the store, despite the manager’s punches and pushes.

How Cure was identified was “the most contested issue of this case,” the memo said.

One of the two witnesses struggled to identify Cure in a photo lineup. The clerk picked Cure’s photo from a database because she was “very impressed by how well the man was dressed and how neatly he kept himself, so she went through the pictures until she found a man who looked like he really cared about his appearance,” the memo said.

“The issues we find most troublesome are those surrounding how Cure became a suspect in the first place,” the memo said. “Seemingly, a man who had no connection to a Walgreens robbery became the main suspect after someone reviewed photos of well-dressed/neat appearing African American males. That was it.”

Cure had a “well established” alibi, the memo said. He had an ATM receipt from 6:52 a.m. at a bank 3.2 miles away.

Cure and his then-girlfriend testified that he rode the bus to his construction job that morning. His boss said Cure, one of his best employees, was already there working by the time he arrived at 8 a.m. No one noticed anything unusual about him, let alone any indication that he had been punched repeatedly within the hour.

Driving a car would have been “the only remotely viable way” for him to stop at the ATM, rob the store in less than 10 minutes and get to work in uniform before 8 a.m., the memo said.

“Even with a car based on the mileage, traffic and school zones during that time, it still most likely would not have been possible,” the unit’s memo said. That was just one of the concerns with the case.

Cure’s first trial ended with a hung jury, and he was found guilty on both charges and sentenced to life in prison in November 2004. He was released from a prison in Sumter County in April 2020, and his conviction was overturned before the end of the year.

Rep. Michael Gottlieb, D-Davie, said he filed Cure’s claims bill in the 2022 session, but it didn’t pass. Bills were filed again this session with his support and that of Rep. Ashley Gantt, D-Miami, and Sen. Shevrin Jones, D-Miami Gardens.

Cure will receive 120 hours of college tuition and fees to use at any career center, college or state university. And Cure does have plans to use them, Gottlieb said.

Innocence Project of Florida Executive Director Seth Miller said Cure, whom the agency worked with, was “thrilled” to hear the news.

“He was just so thankful that this part of the process is over and that he’s going to be able to have some resources available to really accomplish some of his goals, and then have financial stability at this point in his life,” Miller said.

The review unit, headed by Assistant State Attorney Arielle Demby Berger, also reviewed the case of Sidney Holmes, who served over 34 years of a 400-year sentence for a 1988 armed robbery he maintained he never committed. He was exonerated earlier this year.