6 February 16-22, 2023 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | music | cafe | culture | Night+Day | News | letters | coNteNts | Month XX–Month XX, 2008 miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | ART | STAGE | NIGHT+DAY | METRO | RIPTIDE | LETTERS | CONTENTS | P rison Nineteen-year-old Boast Laster arrived at Raiford Prison in North Florida on February 4, 1964. The huge complex, the largest in the state, was ringed by double fences topped with barbed wire and German shepherds that patrolled the area be- tween them. Guards with ri- fles stood atop perimeter watchtowers. Inside the facility, which lacked air-con- ditioning, segregation ruled. Blacks and whites never ate, showered, worked, or rested in the same area or at the same time. Skin color aside, Raiford was a barely func- tioning dumping ground for the state’s worst criminals and troubled inmates from other prisons. In 1969, the prison’s superintendent told the Miami Herald, “We have not only the rejects of society but the rejects of the prison system here.” Racism, rape, and as- sault were constants. In October 1968, a guard told Laster he had a phone call. It was a member of his mother’s church. “I’m sorry, Bo,” she said. “Your mama died.” Laster says his mother wrote him many letters but never visited him at Raiford be- cause it upset her too much. Then she got sick and couldn’t even visit if she wanted to. Laster says she died of a stress-related illness due to overwork and his imprisonment. She was 53. By the time Bo found out, she’d al- ready been buried. Laster’s girlfriend stuck by him until his mother’s death. She’d make the long bus trip to Raiford every few weeks to bring him food and necessities, but Laster eventually asked her to stop. “Don’t let me keep you from liv- ing,” he says he told her. Yet she still came. Fi- nally, he took her off his visitation list so she wouldn’t be allowed into the prison. Last he heard, she married a serviceman and had twin daughters. He never heard from Reid Bryant again. Laster’s father told him Bryant disappeared from Florida City after his acquittal. There were rumors he’d been shot to death. Several phone numbers and at least two addresses are listed online for an 80-year-old Reid Bryant in Florida City. Phone calls and letters received no response. My attempts to contact possible family members on social media likewise got nowhere. I even found a Florida City teenager who shares Bryant’s full name (Reid Henry Bryant), but his mother said there was no relation. Eventually, I drove to Florida City and knocked on doors. Nothing. AN APPEAL, AT LAST Paradoxically, a death sentence might have proved more helpful to Laster than a life sen- tence. Under Florida law, a death sentence is automatically appealed to the state supreme court. The high court would have examined his case and could have ordered a new trial. With a life sentence, however, there is no mandate for an appeal. And, while the right to appeal a criminal conviction had long been enshrined in the U.S. and Florida constitu- tions, there was no procedure to ensure that a defendant in Florida actually got one. Instead, the process of filing an appeal was entrusted to a defendant’s trial lawyer. “If an indigent person was convicted of a felony,” explains Richard Jacobs, who worked as an assistant state attorney in Miami during the 1960s, “ the trial lawyer was supposed to peti- tion the court to be removed and have appel- late counsel appointed.” Michael Zarowny, Laster’s lawyer, didn’t do that. And Laster didn’t know the law. “Ain’t nobody tell me about no appeal,” he says. A full six years later, in 1971, an attorney named Thomas Balikes finally filed an appeal on Laster’s behalf. Laster says he never met Balikes and was unaware of the appeal until the clerk of court sent him some paperwork. Longtime Miami attorney Roy Black sur- mises that the court may have noticed that Laster never got an appeal and assigned the case to an attorney. Additionally, a 1970 Flor- ida Supreme Court decision, Baggett v. Wain- wright, which guaranteed indigent defendants the right to free counsel on appeal, may have led to a review of capital cases and the appointment of Balikes to Laster’s case. In court filings, Balikes argued that Last- er’s confession shouldn’t have been admitted at trial because his Miranda rights had been violated. The Miranda law, derived from the 1966 U.S. Supreme Court case Miranda v. Ari- zona, mandates that police officers inform suspects of their right to remain silent and to consult with an attorney before questioning. It was, however, a strange basis for an ap- peal. While the transcript of Laster’s confes- sion shows that detectives failed to inform him of his right to legal counsel, his interroga- tion occurred three years before the ruling in Miranda. And in Johnson v. New Jersey, de- cided a week after Miranda, the court ruled that Miranda couldn’t be applied retroactively. The appeal was denied. A year later, in 1972, Laster briefly tasted freedom when he was allowed out for 24 hours to visit his father, who was hospitalized with leukemia. His father, whose name was also Boast Laster, had never stopped working toward his son’s exoneration but eventually grew too ill to continue. To the younger Laster, the outside world looked like a dream — “all that space and people just livin’” — but he didn’t have time to look around. He said his goodbyes; a month later, his father was gone. SECOND CHANCE In the 1970s, even life sentences often carried the possibility of parole in Florida. Inmates who conducted themselves well could some- times get transferred to work-release centers — low-security facilities where inmates lived while working at jobs in the community — within seven or eight years. If an inmate proved himself responsible in work release, he was paroled. The idea was to give lifers hope for eventual release. An endless sentence was a recipe for bad behavior. Parole also helped to counter prison overcrowding. From 1970 to 1975, Laster received no dis- ciplinary write-ups at any of the five prisons where he was held. That, along with his par- ticipation in a GED program and Alcoholics Anonymous, favorable work reports, religious faith, and “excellent” attitude, led to his transfer to the Lakeland Community Correc- tions Center, a work-release facility in Polk County, on August 1, 1975. Laster says he was a “permanent party” at Lakeland — meaning he worked “within” the facility, not outside, and received $20 (a little over $100 in today’s economy) each month to buy snacks and toi- letries from the commissary. Prison records indicate Laster was paroled six months later, went to live in a low-income apartment nearby, and began working as a cook at a Holiday Inn. Laster disputes that he was paroled. He says he continued living at the work-release center and was simply given permission by a supervisor to work at the Holiday Inn in the evenings. The apartment, he says, belonged to a friend whom he was allowed to visit now and then during temporary furloughs. It’s unclear whether Laster simply misun- derstood the conditions of his work release or, as he claims, that those conditions weren’t explained to him. Either way, a few weeks after Laster began working at the hotel, a prison report quoted his employer as saying that Laster “is an ex- cellent worker and well-liked by all his co- workers.” The report stated that he “appears to be adjusting well” and “no problems are noted.” Laster, however, found himself increas- ingly frustrated at his ongoing supervision. After seeing the outside world, his thrill at re- ceiving a modicum of freedom transformed into anger at having lost 12 years of his life for a crime he swore he didn’t commit and at see- ing no path back to a normal existence. In mid-April, ten weeks after starting his part-time evening job, the 32-year-old re- solved to make a run for it. He figured he could disappear and start fresh somewhere far away if he could get enough money to leave Florida. He borrowed a .22-caliber pistol from a teenage co-worker, walked into four conve- nience stores, pointed the gun at the clerks, and demanded the money in their registers. They all complied. But Laster didn’t get far; cops tracked him down three days later, still THE PERPLEXING CASE OF FLORIDA’S LONGEST-SERVING INMATE, PART 2. HARD TIME B Y T E R E N C E C A N T A R E L L A
