Update on my Florida Bar complaint against Jerry Hill

I am temporarily withdrawing my complaint to update it with Hill's full testimony from Leo Schofield's 2020 FCOR hearing.

I am temporarily withdrawing my three-count Florida Bar complaint against former 10th Judicial Circuit State Attorney Jerry Hill so I can rewrite the count that concerns Bar Rule 4.3.3. – “Candor toward the tribunal.” I will communicate this to the Florida Bar on Wednesday. I have taken down the narrative of the complaint that I posted earlier.

I am doing this because I want my Florida Bar complaint to reflect the entirety of Jerry Hill’s testimony at Florida Commission on Offender Review (FCOR) in 2020 rather than excerpts available from the Bone Valley podcast and the 10th Judicial Circuit State Attorney’s Office.

I did not know that full record existed, given my previous interactions with Bone Valley producers and the 10th SAO. I blame myself for this, not them. I made bad assumptions. I should have asked both Bone Valley and the SAO for the full record, rather than rely on excerpts. That’s on me, not either of them. The SAO sent me an audio excerpt today that convinced me I should try to find the entire record, which I was able to get from Bone Valley producers this evening.

I now have the full record of Hill’s 2020 testimony on audio, which I need to transcribe before I rewrite the opening count for the Bar complaint. In a normal week, I could probably have all of this done by Friday or Saturday. However, I have a personal obligation that will keep me away from my computer for two weeks starting Thursday. So my revised complaint will have to wait until that’s finished. And I wanted to set that expectation for readers.

I absolutely continue to allege that Jerry Hill violated Bar rules concerning “candor toward the tribunal” in his 2020 appearance before FCOR to argue against Leo Schofield’s release — and in his failure to clarify his testimony ever since. My revised complaint will reflect that.

I continue to allege that Hill’s constant conflation of Leo Jr. and Leo Sr. in discussing the facts of Michelle Schofield’s killing is material and highly prejudicial to the FCOR. The SAO’s clip does nothing to change that. But it does have Hill making a brief reference, almost like a verbal footnote, to Michelle Schofield as Leo’s “daughter-in-law.” That could be exculpatory evidence against a specific moral charge of lying that I have made against Hill more prominently than anyone else. You can judge for yourself when I get the transcription and update done.

If there is potentially exculpatory evidence for Hill, I want to make sure everyone sees it and considers it, the Bar included. That’s a big difference between me and Jerry Hill and the 10th Circuit SAO, which has continually denied a jury the chance to consider mountains of far more convincing exculpatory evidence for Leo Schofield.

Indeed, Jerry Hill’s testimony to the FCOR in 2020 is a tiny part of his three decades of misconduct in the Leo Schofield case. And I have different interests than either the Bone Valley team or the SAO.

Bone Valley is trying to do deep, personal, investigative journalism that frees a wrongly convicted who happens to be from Polk County. The SAO is trying to protect an obviously wrongful conviction so neither Hill nor anyone else ever has to face a personal consequence for it.

My interest, beyond justice for Leo, is accountability. I live here. The 10th SAO (its prosecutors and leaders, not its competent investigators) is a mess that needs to be cleaned up.

To assist in that effort, I want my complaint to be as fair and thorough and accurate as it can possibly be. So I’m going to redo it so everybody can see everything Hill said.

And remember this: there’s a reason the 10th SAO didn’t bring Hill to Schofield’s 2023 FCOR hearing. I can’t think of any more damning conclusion about the “candor” of his 2020 testimony.