Appeals court overturns $3.6 million judgment against Miramar in case of man wrongly imprisoned for 26 years

An appeals court on Wednesday overturned a Broward judge’s order that the city of Miramar owed $3.6 million to Anthony Caravella, a man who was exonerated in 2010 after spending over two decades in prison for a murder and rape he did not commit.

Broward Circuit Judge Carlos Rodriguez late last year ordered Miramar to pay $2.5 million in compensatory damages and nearly $1.1 million in interest and attorneys’ fees after Caravella won a federal lawsuit in 2013 against the two now-retired Miramar officers who he argued coerced him into confessing to the 1983 murder of 58-year-old Ada Jankowski.

At 15 and with an IQ of 67, Caravella, who had past run-ins with law enforcement for theft, was arrested on a juvenile charge unrelated to Jankowski’s murder, according to the Innocence Project of Florida, a nonprofit that works with wrongfully-convicted inmates.

Caravella gave multiple recorded statements to officers while he was in custody that “were made on the backdrop of suggestive and coercive interrogation tactics by law enforcement,” according to the Innocence Project’s website on the case. Prosecutors during trial relied almost entirely on his statements.

“With each statement, Caravella’s theory of events was consistently at odds with the actual physical evidence and circumstances of the crime,” the Innocence Project’s site says. “Thus, detectives weaved accurate facts into Caravella’s statements through the use of very suggestive, leading questions. Caravella admitted a greater role in the murder/rape with each statement and finally confessed that he committed the crime alone.”

Accused officers George Pierson and William Mantesta denied the accusations that they coerced Caravella, the South Florida Sun Sentinel previously reported.

Caravella was freed by DNA evidence in 2009 and officially exonerated in 2010. Miramar Police and the Broward State Attorney’s Office identified a different man as a person of interest in 2010 — Anthony Martinez, who was 17 years old at the time of the murder and earlier a suspect. Martinez died of natural causes two months after authorities said he was a person of interest.

The federal jury found the officers intentionally violated Caravella’s civil rights under three separate constitutional amendments and awarded him $7.5 million, of which $4.5 million was against the officers personally. Caravella’s lawyers in 2022 took Miramar to Broward Circuit Court to force the city to pay the rest. Miramar’s attorneys with Austin Pamies Norris Weeks Powell appealed.

The 4th District Court of Appeal on Wednesday in its 9-page opinion agreed with the city’s argument, citing a Florida law that says a city can’t be required to pay a judgment where an officer was determined “to have caused the harm intentionally,” as the federal jury decided in Caravella’s case in 2013.

The court emphasized in its opinion the importance of the law stating “intentionally.” The federal jury was instructed in the 2013 lawsuit to specifically decide whether the officers’ actions were intentional.

“Because the jury found the officers liable on all three constitutional rights claims, the jury necessarily found the officers to have ’caused the harm intentionally”’ to Caravella, the court wrote in its opinion.

Miramar’s City Manager Dr. Roy Virgin said in an emailed statement Thursday evening: “This ruling reaffirms our commitment to upholding justice and the rule of law. We are relieved that the Appellate court recognized the error in the previous judgment and ruled in favor of the City.”

Donald Spadaro, an attorney acting as Caravella’s legal guardian in the case, did not return a voicemail seeking comment Thursday night.

Sun Sentinel staff writer Rafael Olmeda contributed to this report. Information from the Sun Sentinel archives was used in this report. 

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