From Patriotism To Prison

by Jimmy Ates

My book is the story of the murder of my wife of twenty-seven years and my conviction of her murder. Two FDLE Crime Scene Investigators found male DNA, hairs, and fibers under her fingernails. They found a fingerprint, several bloody shoe prints, a busted master bedroom doorjamb, and an accelerant used to burn my home. All of this evidence was withheld from my defense at my first trial and none of the evidence belonged to me.In 1998, seven years after her murder, I was found guilty of first-degree murder. In 2008, my conviction was overturned with the help of the Innocence Project of Florida. The United States Supreme Court ruled that the FBI's CBLA analysis was junk science.In March 2011, I was tried and convicted again of murdering my wife. In December of 2009, Okaloosa County Sheriff's investigator, Mike Irwin, sent Ms. Hahn into the home of Jackie Long while wearing a wire. Jackie Long confessed to murdering my wife, saying that he, Robert Money, and Donald Courtney "entered Old Man Ates's home in a robbery that went bad." The state withheld that tape from the defense. In 2018, my conviction was overturned.In 2018, the Innocence Project of Florida and the Exoneration Project of Chicago began representing me. On March 11, 2021, my nightmare ended!