Description
In the spring of 1997, Joaquín José Martínez, a 25-year-old Spanish citizen, was sentenced to death in Florida for a crime he didn’t commit. He was accused of murdering a young couple even though there was no hard evidence against him: there were no witnesses and none of the fingerprints or blood and saliva found at the scene of the crime were his.
The jury sentenced Martínez to the electric chair based on two people’s testimony: his ex-wife, who caused his arrest, and his ex-girlfriend, who suddenly changed her story a few days before the trial. Martínez’ parents soon started a nationwide campaign in Spain to save their son’s life. They made 36 trips to the United States and made people aware of the travesty of justice being committed. They raised over 600,000 Euros to hire one of the best criminal lawyers in the United States and four years later, they rescued their son from death row.