One-by-one, Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Teresa Pooler read aloud a jury’s findings of not guilty. And with each declaration, Ronald Connor clenched his fists a bit tighter and his eyes got a bit wetter.
Finally, as the judge said not guilty for the sixth time, Connor lowered his head, took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes and bear-hugged the public defenders who represented him. Family and friends in the pews of the Miami-Dade criminal courthouse heeded the judge’s warning to stay quiet — but they, too, expressed sheer joy in their hugs and high-fives.
Connor, 26, and a former guard at the state’s Dade Correctional Institution, was cleared Tuesday evening of all charges but one in the murder of a mentally ill prisoner while he was being transferred to another facility two years ago. In the months preceding the trial, three other guards admitted to beating Ronald Gene Ingram to death.
They each received 20-year sentences. All three testified at trial. The jurors, who deliberated for three hours after the almost two-week trial, found Connor guilty of only a single count of culpable negligence, a misdemeanor charge with a maximum penalty of one year in prison.