Last Updated: October 01, 1996
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There is only one relevant undisputed truth about the key witness in the efforts to free convicted murderer Joe Spaziano: The man's a liar.
The question is whether he lied 20 years ago when he told how Spaziano murdered a young Orlando hospital clerk, or whether he is lying now when he says his story was made up. Nothing else in this case is new.
For the Orlando Sentinel, that question is more than an academic exercise. Orlando is where Spaziano lived. It is where the young woman was murdered. It is where the Outlaws motorcycle gang terrorized people. It could be where Spaziano would return should he be turned free. Our obligations to the community run deep. We want to be as sure as we can what the truth is.
Therein lies the difference in how the Sentinel and the Miami Herald approached this story. As the Herald set out to free someone its reporters and editors believed to have been wronged, the Sentinel set out to find out when the key witness was telling the truth — or even if he can still remember the truth about this murder case. Who is this guy and what is he about?
Were we skeptical of his story? Absolutely. Maybe it was because it kept changing. Maybe it was because he felt threatened by the Outlaws. Maybe it was that despite a proclaimed cleansing religious conversion he continued to have trouble with the law. Even as all this unfolded, he was placed on probation for making 500 harassing phone calls. Twice in the past five years he was arrested for drunken driving. Twice he was charged with beating former girlfriends. Then there were his phone calls to the tabloid TV shows.
Though his testimony was key to the Spaziano conviction, others linked Spaziano to the clerk and her disappearance. There were those, too, who heard his original account long before any hypnosis session. To check the witness' story, we chased leads wherever they were. What we didn't find was anyone to support his change of heart. We found many to support his original account.
On our editorial page, we called first for a review of the case and an opening of key records. When the last hearing was over, we decried a judicial process that moves so slowly that the courts are trying to unravel a case 20 years later when key figures are dead and the evidence stale. To overturn the original jury, any new evidence needed to be compelling, and we found the witness' latest account unconvincing.
Mistakes? I wish we had not published the original article written by Spaziano's attorney, at least not unchallenged. Though we scrambled to put together a short piece from other sources recounting issues in the original trial — something no other paper did — the attorney's article was part of a mounting crusade, and we were unwittingly used in that. We were particularly upset when he listed a Sentinel reporter and editor as supporting his pleas for Spaziano.
I like to make my own bed; I particularly don't like being used. 
