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State Objects To Life Sentence In Key Escambia Dealth Penalty Case
March 2, 2016
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office is disputing arguments that a death row inmate from Escambia County should receive life in prison after successfully challenging Florida’s death-penalty sentencing system in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Bondi’s office filed a document Monday in the Florida Supreme Court arguing that what is known a “harmless error analysis” should be conducted in the case of Timothy Lee Hurst. An attorney for Hurst filed a motion last month asking the state Supreme Court to send the case to a lower court for imposition of a life sentence.
A challenge by Hurst led the U.S. Supreme Court in January to issue an 8-1 ruling that found Florida’s death-penalty sentencing system unconstitutional. The ruling said juries — not judges— should be responsible for imposing the death penalty and that Florida’s system of giving power to judges violated Hurst’s Sixth Amendment right to a trial by jury. Lawmakers are moving forward with plans to change the sentencing system to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
In the document filed Monday, Bondi’s office said the U.S. Supreme Court required a “harmless error analysis” in the Hurst case. Broadly, such analyses determine whether errors are serious enough to require overturning earlier court decisions — in Hurst’s case, the decision to sentence him to death.
“If the United States Supreme Court felt it appropriate to commute appellant’s (Hurst’s) sentence to life imprisonment, it could have done so,” the document filed by Bondi’s office said. “Instead, the High Court specifically remanded this case to this (Florida Supreme) Court with directions to conduct a harmless error analysis.”
Hurst was sentenced to death for the 1998 killing of fast-food worker Cynthia Harrison. Harrison, an assistant manager at a Popeye’s Fried Chicken restaurant on Nine Mile Road where Hurst worked, was bound, gagged and stabbed more than 60 times. Her body was found in a freezer.
The motion filed last month by Hurst’s attorney did not take issue with his guilt. But it said Hurst should be sentenced to life in prison because he has “fundamentally been denied his Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial” in sentencing.
Comments
7 Responses to “State Objects To Life Sentence In Key Escambia Dealth Penalty Case”
I’m tired of looking at this devil.
Thank you so much Pam Bondi for standing up for our citizens, families, victims, communities, children, and constitution. Do not let these perverts of law have their way with this one. Amen to you.
This is why the next Supreme Court Nominee is SO important… They are taking away the voice of the People every day.
You Go Ms Pam!!!
He had a jury trial……the jury found him guilty. I don’t agree with the supreme court on this, the death penalty needs to stand, if not hastened, and this guy needs to die.
You keep fighting Attorney General Pam Bondi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
He should have be gone along time ago. What he continues to do is to punish her loved ones,husband. friends, family, and those that are close, for years and years to come. They live with this 24 – 7 and is on their hearts and minds daily.
Can you even begin to feel what they are feeling? Their lives were totally changed and destroyed that day and will never be the same again. They still eat, breath , and live this everyday. It’s as though they are being punished for what he did to her. Cynthia did not deserve any of this nor did they. He was spawn of evil!!! A dog that is rabid and should be put down before he spreads his disease to another.
And to be twice her size and do this to her. Please try to put yourself or your loved one in that position and begin to imagine what went through her mind, the extreme pain she was feeling with each blow (60) and to feel herself slowing dying, fighting with every ounce of strength she had to survive. Her thoughts of !!!!!!!HELP ME PLEASE SOMEONE HELE ME PLEASE!!!! The thoughts of her husband, monther, father, and loved ones that may have gone through her head. No one know and never will since he made sure of that.
Where is the humanity in that????? He is not human……..
Just remember she could have become a loving mother one day, but that chance will never happen will it?
Yes, Carolyn. Every proven murder should be followed by an execution within 10 years (5 would be better). The method of execution should match the crime. It would be firing squad if the murderer used a gun, a guillotine if the murderer used a knife or a sword, the gas chamber if the murderer used suffocation, etc.
Both reducing time for appeals and changing the execution methods is what it would take to put real fear in the hearts of the criminals. They don’t fear execution today because of the lengthy 20+ year and expensive process (lawyers) and today’s painless execution methods. The electric chair was more feared than the needle.
It is a sad state of affairs when someone could do something so brutal to another person and not be executed already. His guilt is undisputed as it should be. That should be the basis for execution. He did the horrible thing, it is not disputed, he now should be executed in whatever was the State of Florida determines to execute someone. Just bring in firing squads. That is not cruel or unusual.