Gregory Capehart is getting depressed again.

After DNA test results late last month showed there was no evidence linking him to a 1987 rape and murder in Pasco County, he's still sitting in a jail cell — wondering when he'll finally become free after 18 years behind bars for crime he says he didn't commit.

"I don't know why they're doing this. I'm getting sick and tired of it. I don't understand why I'm still sitting here," Capehart told the Eagle in a March 15 phone interview.

But Capehart, even though he had the DNA test for which he's waited for so many years, won't be cleared and freed from jail until a judge clears him.

The first step in determining Capehart's release date will come Wednesday, April 12, Judy Kennedy, a Court Services administrator in Pasco County's Criminal Court Division, said Monday, March 27.

"Mr. Capehart has a status check at 9 a.m. that day," Kennedy said. "He has a new trial set at 9 a.m. April 17. That's the only information we have on him."

What sets Capehart's case apart from others is that it was "adopted" by a group of Lely High School students and their English teacher, John Dwyer, about two years ago.

Dwyer heard about Capehart through the Roman Catholic peace advocacy group, Pax Christi, which tucked Capehart under its wing when members heard about his story.

Capehart says he was in the wrong place at the wrong time when Marilyn Reeves, a 62-year-old Pasco County woman, was raped, smothered and robbed of $3 in her home.

Capehart was apprehended and arrested for the crime and coerced by police into confessing, he said.

The only hope that could prove Capehart's innocence was a DNA test, which wasn't available at the time. When Dwyer found out about it, he told his students during a discussion of Dostoyevsky's novel, Crime and Punishment. The students immediately had a petition signed, held a peaceful demonstration on the steps of the Collier County Courthouse, and wrote letters asking judicial officials to order a DNA test for Capehart.

After having several court-appointed defense attorneys and unexplained delays for years in the judicial system, the test was performed in February. Capehart's latest attorney, Daniel Hernandez of Tampa, wouldn't talk to the press but told Capehart the test results showed there was no evidence that linked him to the crime.

During a recent phone interview, Capehart said Hernandez had asked for a continuance on the upcoming hearing, which now has been set for April 12.

Dwyer said Monday, March 27, that Hernandez told him he asked for the continuance because he (Hernandez) and the prosecutor both had conflicts on an earlier hearing date.

Dwyer said it was frustrating for Capehart and everyone involved in "free Capehart" campaign not to know what was going to happen next and — most importantly — when Capehart would finally be released.

"Greg is going to have to go to a halfway house after he's released," Dwyer said Monday, March 27. "He's going to have to undergo socialization, a major reconstruction of his life, when you realize he's spent half his life — his entire adult life — behind bars.

Those people (in prison) are treated and herded like animals once they're locked up in there."

Capehart was on death row at the Union Correctional Center in Raiford from 1988 until June, when Judge Lynn Tepper of the Sixth Judicial Court ordered him transferred to the Pasco County Detention Center. He's been there since then, but tagged as a "Red Dot" inmate — one that has to be handcuffed and shackled when visitors call.

Capehart was overjoyed when Hernandez told him about the DNA test results.

But slightly more than a month later, that joy is fading into depression as Capehart waits still longer to walk out the prison gates for good.

"I've already spent over 17 years of my life for something I didn't do," Capehart told the Eagle. "I don't understand why the state keeps on dragging their feet."

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