Offshoreonly.com - Free Benjamin Barry Kramer

Benjamin Barry Kramer, the flashy South Florida powerboat racer convicted of ordering the notorious 1987 murder of business rival Don Aronow, is claiming that authorities sent him to prison knowing that the triggerman had cleared him of involvement in the slaying.

His proof: a purported February 2009 deathbed confession by triggerman Robert "Bobby'' Young in which the killer claimed he told police and prosecutors in 1995 that Colombian drug dealers actually ordered Aronow's assassination.

Kramer, who pleaded "no contest'' to manslaughter in 1996 in exchange for 19 years in prison, is asking Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Dava Tunis to throw out his conviction. A preliminary hearing is set for Friday.

But one of the lead homicide detectives on the case on Tuesday called Kramer's claim "complete, unadulterated b---s---.''

Kramer has already finished the 19-year state sentence for Aronow's killing, but his lawyer suggested the move could somehow help reduce Kramer's separate federal life sentence for money laundering.

``Ben Kramer seeks vindication based on actual innocence. It may materially impact other matters as well,'' one of his lawyers, Benson Weintraub, said in a statement.

A millionaire powerboat builder, Aronow was gunned down in February 1987 outside his USA Racing office in the 3000 block of Northeast 188th Street.

Prosecutors alleged that Kramer ordered Aronow's assassination in a business dispute.

Young, a ruthless convicted killer, kidnapper and cocaine trafficker, admitted to authorities that he gunned down Aronow. He pleaded ``no contest'' to second-degree murder in 1995 and was sentenced to 19 years, but his plea deal did not require him to identify who had hired him for the hit.

Young died in prison last year of natural causes. But before that, according to Kramer's attorneys, Young called them to say he had long ago cleared Kramer in a meeting with prosecutors and police shortly after taking his plea.

``I told prosecutors and police detectives that I had been hired by Colombian cocaine dealers to kill Donald Aronow,'' according to Young's statement filed by Kramer's attorneys. ``I also furnished the prosecutors and police detectives with the names of two Colombian cocaine dealers.''

Young's deathbed statement was taken by defense lawyer Kenneth Kukec, who represented Kramer along with Jose Quiñon.

According to Kramer's motion, he only took the manslaughter plea to get out of squalid conditions at the Dade County Jail. Kramer claims that neither he nor his lawyers were ever notified that Young had fingered Colombians for the hit. If true, the law would have required disclosure from prosecutors of such exculpatory evidence to the defense.

Former Miami-Dade police homicide Detective Greg Smith, who sat in on the debriefing with Young, denied the gunman ever cleared Kramer or named Colombians as the masterminds of the Aronow hit.

``He never implicated anybody,'' Smith scoffed. ``He said he wasn't a rat.''

One of Young's lawyers, Kayo Morgan, famously echoed his client in 1995: ``Bobby is not a rat. He is not a cheese-eater.''

Miami-Dade prosecutor Gary Winston, who handled the case then, said he could not comment because he had not seen Kramer's motion.

The state's case against Kramer relied on testimony of two jailhouse informants and a disgraced lawyer who had learned of Kramer's involvement, as well as incriminating phone calls from Kramer recorded in federal prison.

Kramer is also notorious for his storied attempt to escape from prison. In 1990, he tried fleeing the Federal Correctional Institution in South Miami-Dade in a helicopter, but failed when the copter crashed.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/2...#ixzz0j5e03ngn