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Florida

Political repression plays out state by state — shaped by local institutions, prosecutors, and movements for defense. These are the documented political prisoners and cases the census holds for Florida.

189Documented
12In custody
171Released
3Awaiting trial

Eras of repression in Florida

Where Florida’s entries fall across the census’s historical eras.

2000s 43 1950s 29 2020s 26 1930s 25 2010s 23 1960s 18

Documented cases

189 entries in the census — every one stays in the record, whether the case is open or closed.

J
Joseph Shoemaker
Joseph Shoemaker was a leader of the Modern Democrats and the unemployed movement in Tampa, Florida, arrested...
C
Charles Smolikoff
Released
Charles Smolikoff was a former Transport Workers organizer jailed without bail in the 1954 Dade County 'subver...
A
Anthony Smyth
Released
Anthony Smyth, 43, US citizen, IRA gun-running co-defendant; convicted; 36 months federal prison.
D
Dan B. Speed
Released
Dan B. Speed was the car-pool coordinator of the Inter-Civic Council in Tallahassee, arrested without warrant...
H
Henry Marion Steele
Released
Henry Marion Steele participated in the 1960 Tallahassee campaign against segregated lunch counters and the en...
D
Dontario J. Stephens
Released
Dontario J. Stephens, 27, of Tampa, FL was charged with grand theft and burglary during a state of emergency f...
N
Nicolas Tapasco Romero
Released
Nicolas Ricardo Tapasco Romero, age 45, a former detective with the Colombian Department of Administrative Sec...
B
Bryn Taylor
Released
Bryn Taylor, 26, University of Florida PhD candidate, was arraigned May 16, 2023 for allegedly battering an of...
H
Harold Taylor
Taylor, living in Panama City by the 2000s, was one of the former Black Panthers arrested when the decades-old...
B
Bertha Teplow
Released
Mrs. Bertha Teplow was one of the first witnesses cited for contempt by the Florida Legislative Investigating...
G
Gregory William Loel Timm
Released
Gregory William Loel Timm, age 27, drove a minivan into a tent of Republican volunteers running a voter-regist...
J
Jose Tito Libio Ulloa Melo
Released
Jose Tito Libio Ulloa Melo, age 46, Salamanca-cluster defendant; airport-security contact. 30 months federal p...
C
Caroline Vasquez
Released
Caroline Vasquez was a tobacco worker's daughter sentenced to a year for protesting the arrest of her fourteen...
F
Francisca Vasquez
Released
Francisca Vasquez was Caroline's mother, also sentenced to a year in the Tampa case in the Tampa tobacco-strik...
N
Nicholas Vazquez
Released
Nicholas Vazquez, 22 at the time and of Miami, Florida, was one of the "GEO9," a group of Fort Lauderdale Food...
E
Ellen Vessels
Released
Ellen Vessels, 34 at the time, was one of the "GEO9," a group of Fort Lauderdale Food Not Bombs activists arre...
J
Joseph Wall
Released
Joseph "Jody" Wall was a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee activist in St. Petersburg, Florida. On Dec...
T
Tommy Williams
Released
Tommy Williams was a St. Petersburg Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee activist arrested and jailed dur...
W
Walter Woodard
Released
Walter Woodard was one of the four Black Florida defendants sentenced to death on coerced confessions whose ca...
A
Alam Zeb
Released
South Florida imam Hafiz Muhammed Sher Ali Khan, 76, and his sons Irfan Khan, 37, and Izhar Khan, 24, allegedl...
I
Ivan Jacob Zecher
Released
On June 10, 2020 in Jacksonville, FL, Ivan Jacob Zecher, 27, was charged with felon in possession of a firearm...

Institutions in Florida

Prisons, jails, and detention centers in Florida that appear in the census’s case files.

FCI MariannaMarianna, Florida
11 cases
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of FloridaGainesville, Florida
8 cases
Palm Beach County JailWest Palm Beach, Florida
8 cases
Florida State PrisonRaiford, Florida
7 cases
Raiford PenitentiaryRaiford, Florida
7 cases
Miami FDCMiami, Florida
4 cases
Hillsborough County JailTampa, Florida
4 cases
Florida state prisonLakeland, Florida
3 cases