Exonerated Florida man sings of wrongful conviction
Bill Dillon says his music was the key to enduring life in prison before he was exonerated for a murder he did not commit in Brevard County, Fla.
The first song he wrote as a free man is called, "Black Robes and Lawyers."
"Bill Dillon's case was a travesty of justice. From the very beginning to the end, it was a case of fabrication," said attorney Mike Pirolo, who helped win Dillon his freedom. "Bill Dillon's life was stolen from him."
In August 1981, Dillon was a 20-year-old baseball prospect about to get a second tryout with the Detroit Tigers when the badly beaten body of a 40-year-old man was discovered by a beach near his home.
"The suspect in the case was described as around 5'10" ... and had a moustache," said Pirolo.
The description didn't match Dillon.
"I'm 6'4". And I never ever had a moustache," he told Moriarty.
But, as in the Crosley Green case, recently profiled by "48 Hours," the fact that the description didn't fit didn't seem to matter.
"There couldn't have been anything in their minds that made them think I did it other than my size," Dillon said. "...that I fit the profile of beating a man to death."
Dillon served more than half his life in prison before DNA tests showed he was not the killer.
"I was released on November 18, 2008, at 5:00 in the evening," he told "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty. "I'd spent at that point, 27-and-a-half years."