‘I never gave up’: Judge exonerates South Florida man in prison for nearly 35 years

After spending nearly 35 years behind bars in South Florida, Sidney Holmes is a free man.

The 57-year-old was exonerated Monday after a wrongful conviction for a 1988 armed robbery in Broward County. Family members caressed each other as they shed tears of joy in Courtroom 6870 of the judicial complex in Fort Lauderdale following Circuit Judge Edward Merrigan’s order authorizing Holmes to be let out of prison.

Wearing a short sleeve button-up white shirt, blue jeans and brown shoes — a sharp contrast to the bright orange prison uniform he had in court — Holmes was hugged and kissed by his mom, aunts and other family members after being released from the county’s Main Jail on Monday evening. He had been moved there from Everglades Correctional Institution in West Miami-Dade.

Holmes told reporters he felt overwhelmed, but that he was clear on what was the first thing he wanted to do now that he is free.

“I’m going to find something to eat,” he said.

“I can’t have hate. I just have to keep on moving.”

“There is no evidence tying Mr. Holmes to the robbery other than a flawed identification,” Arielle Demby Berger, assistant state attorney for the 17th Judicial Circuit, told reporters outside the courtroom earlier in the day. “No fingerprints, no physical evidence. Nothing but one witness ID that we, your honor, believe was a bad ID.”

If the Lauderhill man hadn’t been exonerated, he would’ve likely spent the rest of his life in prison serving a 400-year sentence. He was 23 at the time of his arrest.

Tears streamed down Mary Holmes’ face as she glanced at her son in the courtroom Monday. He was stunned as the judge overturned his conviction and sentence.

“I was so elated,” Mary said. “I just kept praising God.”

She said she planned on taking him out to eat as soon as he was released.

Despite decades of challenges, the family never lost hope, said Nicole Mitchell, Holmes’ sister. And in that time, she never let her brother lose faith.

“It’s over,” she said. “It’s a long, long, long time overdue. A long awaited day.”

As the family fought for Holmes, they lost loved ones, including Holmes’ father and grandparents, said Jacqueline Dixson, a relative. But finally, his innocence came to light.

“God has been with this family for the 34 years,” Dixson said. “We just thank God for allowing this opportunity to come forward.”

Fighting for Holmes’ freedom

Holmes’ exoneration comes after a 2 1/2-year investigation with the Broward State Attorney’s Office, said Seth Miller, executive director of the Innocence Project of Florida, a nonprofit that helps innocent prisoners in the state obtain their freedom and rebuild their lives. Holmes wrote to the organization in 2019, asking them to look into his case.

“In a lot of places, we need to fight tooth and nail just to even get to this point,” Miller said. “It sometimes takes 5 or 10 or 15 years just to vindicate someone.”

The organization took on the case because of “indicators of actual innocence,” such as car and photo lineup misidentifications, Miller said. Investigators also disregarded Holmes’ whereabouts, even though they were verified by several family members.

“When someone’s been in prison for three decades telling everyone ‘I’m innocent,’ ‘I’m innocent,’ — for many of these men and women, no one’s listened to them the entire time,” Miller said.

Holmes, Miller said, was flooded by emotions. Someone was finally listening to him — and fighting for his freedom.

“When he was brought out, he didn’t know that his conviction had been vacated already and that the state was going to drop charges.”

Faulty evidence led to Holmes’ conviction

Holmes had been accused of being the getaway driver for two unidentified men who robbed a man and a woman outside a convenience store in unincorporated Broward, just west of Fort Lauderdale, on June 19, 1988. He was convicted after a jury trial in April 1989, and sentenced the following month.

No one other than Holmes was arrested or convicted for the crime.

In November 2020, he contacted the state attorney’s Conviction Review Unit, a team tasked with identifying plausible claims of innocence on behalf of convicted defendants. After CRU determined that Holmes had a plausible claim of innocence, it conducted an investigation with the help of the Innocence Project.

Following the collaborative review, the CRU determined there was reasonable doubt Holmes was guilty because his conviction relied heavily on an eyewitness that likely misidentified him, partly due to the photo and live lineup practices commonly used by law enforcement at the time. Broward State Attorney Harold F. Pryor and an Independent Review Panel also reached the same conclusion.

“Prosecutors do not believe there was any intentional misconduct by witnesses or law enforcement as the identification practices and technology have vastly improved since 1988 and deputies followed the accepted standards at the time,” the state attorney’s office said in a news release Monday. “The methods used would not be acceptable practices today.”

Despite the tortuous journey to prove he was innocent, Holmes said he never lost hope.

“I never gave up,” he told reporters. “My family was always by me the whole time, so (losing) hope wasn’t going to be an issue.”