Biography
Black man who spent 12 years on Florida's death row, convicted by an all-white jury of the 1963 murders of two white service-station operators — a crime another (white) man confessed to; The Black Panther Vol. 14 (1975) reports he and Wilbert Lee were freed and pardoned by Gov. Reubin Askew. [Source: The Black Panther (Black Panther Party newspaper), v14 no.1,2; digitized at marxists.org — https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/black-panther/index.htm]
Freddie Lee Pitts was one of two Black men, with Wilbert Lee, falsely convicted of the August 1963 kidnapping, robbery and murder of two white gas-station attendants in Port St. Joe, Florida. They were convicted with no material evidence, on confessions obtained through beatings and threats, and sentenced to death in 1968; in 1968 a key witness admitted she had lied under police threat. Pitts, a Black soldier, was beaten until he confessed to the killings. After the Florida Supreme Court ordered a new grand jury in 1969 (Black citizens had been excluded), an all-white jury again convicted them in 1972 and they were sentenced to be electrocuted — even though another man, Curtis Adams Jr., had confessed to the killings. They were finally pardoned by Governor Reubin Askew in 1975. Documented in The Black Panther (April 27, 1974).
