Gerardo Hernandez

In a last-ditch, no-more-cards-to-play legal effort, lawyers for convicted Cuban Five spy Gerardo Hernandez this week (June 14, 2010) filed what is called a collateral appeal—or writ of habeus corpus—in Miami Federal Court claiming it has new evidence the court should have aware of before letting a jury decide the fate of the Five.

The evidence, uncovered by the National Committee to Free The Five through freedom of information requests, shows that a number of Hispanic journalists who wrote inflammatory stories about the Five were actually in the pay of the U.S. government at the time.

That’s not the only grounds Hernandez’s lawyers cite—in their documents, they also argue that the government concealed important evidence and they question the adequacy of the Five’s defence team—but the new evidence is the key to any faint hope the defence has that it will prevail.

Meanwhile Hernandez continues to be held in a US prison in California where he had not been allowed a visit from his wife for 12 years.

You can read the full text of an interview with Leonard Weinglass, the lawyer for Hernandez, here.