He was one half of a notorious Florida criminal justice case typically referred to as the “Pitts-Lee” case.
Wilbert Lee, 83, died at his home in Miami on Oct. 17.
Lee was one of two black men railroaded into Florida’s Death Row for the 1963 murder of two white gas station attendants in Port St. Joe, a small Florida Panhandle town. The other man was Freddie Pitts.
The two were convicted despite the confession of a white man, Curtis Lee Adams, who admitted he killed the gas station attendants. Both Lee and Pitts spent 12 years in prison and on Death Row before Florida’s Gov. Reubin Askew pardoned them in September 1975.
The full story can be found at MiamiHerald.com.
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