Miami Herald, Metro Section, Courts Column, $400 M Judgment for Cuba Execution,
Article by Jay Weaver
$400M Judgment for Cuba Execution
A Miami judge awarded $400 million in damages to the family of a Cuban American executed by Castro's government in 1960. Bobby Fuller was executed by the Castro regime after a military tribunal convicted and sentenced him to death for his role in a botched invasion of Cuba. His mother Jennie had witnessed the trial in October 1960. Before he was driven off to the firing squad, Fuller gave his sobbing mother a black topaz ring for his 6-year-old daughter Lynita, and a farewell note for his father William, and then told his mother: ``Don't cry.''
Thursday, a Miami judge meted out a measure of justice for his wrongful death at the hands of the Cuban government, awarding $100 million in compensatory damages to his remaining four sisters, a brother and a son-in-law. His father, mother and daughter Lynita are dead.
In a symbolic gesture, Circuit Judge Thomas S. Wilson Jr. also ordered the Cuban government to pay Fuller's survivors $300 million in punitive damages -- though they aren't allowed to collect that portion of the money under U.S. law. ''We have found justice, and his death will be vindicated,'' Jeannette Hausler, one of Fuller's sisters and a former University of Miami law school dean of students, said to The Associated Press.
After a one-day trial, Wilson entered the default judgment against Cuba in favor of the family of Robert ''Bobby'' Fuller, a plantation operator who died at age 25 on Oct. 16, 1960. Cuba never answered or defended itself in the family's lawsuit. ''The Fuller story is such a tale of heroism,'' said the family's attorney, John Gaebe, who worked on the case with lawyer Al Perez and CPA Octavio Verdeja.
''We calculated the loss based on what it must have been like to be put through that Roman circus in front of his mother, including the pain and suffering at the time of his arrest and execution,'' Gaebe said. Fuller's family members -- who live in the Miami and Orlando areas -- now face the difficult challenge of actually collecting any of the damages. Some similar lawsuits have resulted in multimillion-dollar awards taken out of frozen Cuban assets in the United States, while others have had less success.
The families of three Brothers to the Rescue pilots killed when their planes were shot down by Cuba's air force in 1996 recovered $97 million from frozen Cuba assets in U.S. bank accounts. Recently, $91 million in frozen Cuban assets were turned over to the families of two men -- CIA pilot Thomas ''Pete'' Ray and businessman Howard Anderson -- who were executed after the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.
FOUND GUILTY
In the current case, the judge found that Cuba, leader Fidel Castro and other senior Cuban officials were guilty of violating U.S. anti-torture and extrajudicial killing laws in the death of Fuller, whose family had operated a 10,000-acre agricultural business in Cuba since 1903.
The family's Cuban roots go back to the turn of the last century, when Jennie Fuller's father, Albin Jewett, a cousin to writer Sarah Orne Jewett, moved to the island. Jennie was 2 years old. By the time of the Castro takeover, her brother and her husband, a New England native, were at the helm and the Jewett family holdings totaled 6,600 acres. Though all were Americans, the eight Fuller children were born in Cuba. One died at an early age. The family moved to Miami during World War II and shuttled back and forth. Bobby Fuller, who had dual Cuban and U.S. citizenship, was born on the plantation in 1934.
After Castro's revolutionary forces seized power in Havana in 1959, the new regime ''repeatedly harassed and threatened'' members of the Fuller family and sought to seize their assets. William Fuller and his son Bobby were enraged when Castro seized the family's land and nationalized their businesses. They were further infuriated that the rallying cry was ``Yanqui, go home!'' Jewell Moncada, an Orlando teacher and Fuller family friend, researched the events that led to Bobby Fuller's death for a book. The Fullers, she told The Miami Herald in 1991, ``were a wealthy family who lost everything to Castro.''
WANTED IT BACK
Bobby, an ex-Marine, Korean War veteran and eldest son, dreamed of wresting everything back. Even so, Moncada remembered him as soft-spoken and a natty dresser, ``not the sort of person you'd think would lead an invasion.'' Bobby's sister Jeannette told The Miami Herald in 1991 that she suspected the motivation may have come from the father. 'I, for one, believe that my father was entirely capable of saying, `Go fight for what is yours,' '' she said. Finally, in October 1960, Bobby Fuller organized a group from Miami to launch an invasion.
William Fuller had been warned to stay away from Cuba, where he was wanted for crimes against Castro. But he had planned to sneak in anyway, at his son's side. He was 57, however, and suffered from heart problems. The small band left him behind in Miami. The invading force was made up of four Americans and 23 Cubans who boarded two vessels, one a PT boat, off the coast of Florida and set out for Cuba. ''It wasn't really an invasion force but an organizing force, a nucleus,'' William Fuller said during his son's wake in Miami. ``They were supposed to recruit others to fight against Castro.''
CAPTURED IN CUBA
But within a week, someone tipped off the Cuban militia. Bobby Fuller was captured in the Sierra Maestra mountains as he attempted to flee to the U.S. Naval Base at GuantÃnamo Bay. ''One more day, we would have made it,'' he told his mother. Bobby Fuller was arrested and charged with ''counterrevolutionary activities'' by Castro agents. He was tortured until he confessed and, following a 15-minute trial in front of jeering crowds, was executed by firing squad and his body dumped in an unmarked ditch, according to court records. The location of the body was never disclosed to family members.
http://www.rrpev.com/News/121506-Miami-Herald.html
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