A press release was issued yesterday announcing that Innocence Project of Florida will stand at the North Door of the Polk County, Florida, courthouse to release news that DNA test results in the case of Jimmy Bain proves his innocence. Great news? Well, sure, it’s always great to correct a wrongful conviction.
But Jimmy Bain has already spent 35 years in prison, convicted of a crime that occurred in 1974, when he was only 18 years old.
On March 4, 1974, the boy was sleeping in a queen-sized bed between his sisters, 10 and 11, when a man crawled through an open window and quietly lifted him out of bed.
The boy didn’t wake up when the man carried him out the door and through an orange grove to a baseball diamond in an open field. He didn’t wake up till the man laid him in the dust and yelled at him to pull down his pants.
Later, the boy told police the man said he thought he was a girl, because his hair was pin-curled with bobby pins.
“He made me turn over,” the boy said.
The 9 year old boy described the man as having “bushy sideburns” and that he said his name was Jim. The boy’s father was the assistant principal, and knew Jimmy Bain, who had bushy sideburns and rode around on a motorcycle. Back then, everybody had bushy sideburns, just as kids today have that dumb-looking cowlick in the front of their hair. It was the style. Just as the style for the establishment was to assume that kids who rode motorcycles were criminals.
There was semen found in the boy’s underpants that came from someone with blood type B. Jimmy Bain had blood type AB. No matter.
There was semen found in the boy’s underpants that came from someone with blood type B. Jimmy Bain had blood type AB. No matter.
At trial, an FBI analyst testified that the semen on the underpants came from a person with blood group B. Bain’s blood group is AB, but the analyst said Bain could not be ruled out as the person who deposited the semen. A defense expert testified that because Bain’s blood group was AB with a strong A factor it ruled him out as a suspect.Kids who rode motorcycles weren’t to be trusted. They were bad seeds. They got what they deserved. That was how people thought back then. As those of us who rode the occasional motorcycle in 1974 know, we went on to shave off our bushy sideburns and become lawyers, doctors and even assistant principals. But not Jimmy Bain. He’s been in prison all that time.
Bain, who had no previous criminal record, provided an alibi. He and his sister told police they were at home watching TV together at the time the boy disappeared. The jury convicted him anyway.
And the person who raped a 9 year old boy? Who knows.
There will be the usual dance steps following today’s announcement, with the state retesting, verifying, then deciding whether to spend the next year or two fighting the merit of DNA testing, all before Jimmy Bain takes a breath of free air. If and when Jimmy Bain is released, he will spend a few years trying to get some compensation from the state for his 35+ years in prison. It will almost be the same as having those 35 years of his life back.
And the victim, the boy who is now 45 years old, who fell apart after his time in the Marines, ended up in the same prison as Jimmy Bain in 2006. He never got over the rape. And now he learns that nothing is certain. He’ll never get those years back either.
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Sir, appreciate you bringing the Jimmy Bain story to our attention. Not only is it another F-Story regarding an obvious railroad job, it covers the behind the scenes red-tape one must endure “after” being found Not Guilty.
Throw-in the stereotyping and racial profiling that was & still is practiced across the country regarding gringos (longhairs, hippies, Elvis & Manson lookalikes) and I am left curious about how many other case from the same era and the same prosecutor exist?
Scott, what a terribly sad story. Somehow I don’t find these thing motivating, just depressing.
I take it back. I do find them motivating. But really, really sad.