Couple Back In U.S. After Murder Charge In Caribbean Dropped

TAMPA, Fla. - A wealthy American couple returned to home soil yesterday after a Caribbean island judge threw out a murder charge and released them from prison.

James and Penny Fletcher, of Huntington, W.Va., spent 283 days in prison in St. Vincent. They were charged with shooting to death Jerome "Jolly" Joseph, a 30-year-old West Indian boat taxi driver on the Caribbean island of Bequia.

The two were separated in prison, spending what seemed to Penny Fletcher like endless days and nights in a dark, dungeon-like cell, locked down for 19 out of every 24 hours.

"I didn't get to see sunlight - never," she said yesterday from a relative's home in Key Largo. "We're trying to adjust."

A judge tossed out the charge Friday, telling jurors the government failed to present evidence tying them to the crime. A conviction would have meant hanging, but appeals are automatic with death sentences.

Penny Fletcher said her 14-foot-by-8-foot cell was inside a fort built in 1806. It housed three wood bunks. There were no mattresses, just wood pallets on which to sleep.

There was no recreation or exercise. Meals consisted of bread, water and rice.

"We'd be given two pieces of bread at 3 p.m.," she said. "We were locked down at 4 p.m. until 6:15 a.m. Then we went to shower and after were locked in again." For breakfast, there was bread and a tea made of sugar and water.

"We have prison pallor," she said. "We're here trying to get our tan back."

Both she and her husband plan to have a complete medical checkup. After a recuperation period in Florida, the Fletchers will head home to West Virginia, she said. She didn't say whether that would be days or weeks.

"I'm just happy to be home," she said.

Her husband, James, 50, said the couple didn't want to talk any further about their painful experience.

"We're trying to assimilate the world of where we were yesterday and the world of where we are today," he said. "We would like a bit of privacy."

Joseph, 30, was a popular boat taxi driver who was last seen ferrying the Fletchers to their yacht, the Carefree, on Oct. 6. His body was found Oct. 9 floating off Bequia. He had been killed by a .22-caliber bullet.

The Fletchers had registered a .22-caliber handgun with Vincentian customs when they sailed into Bequia last August on a round-the-world vacation. They claimed a deckhand stole the weapon.

Prosecutor Karl Hudson-Phillips argued that conflicting statements by the Fletchers about the gun, together with other circumstantial evidence, incriminated the couple.

"The question remains: Who shot Jolly Joseph?" said Judge Dunbar Cenac of the East Caribbean High Court. "There is no evidence before me, direct or indirect, that the accused committed this act."