100^th Execution or 30^th Exoneration? Florida Sets Execution Date for 73-Year-Old Military Veteran Who May Be Innocent

Florida has sched­uled the exe­cu­tion of 73-year-old James Dailey (pic­tured) for November 7, 2019, despite sub­stan­tial evi­dence that he had no involve­ment in the killing, includ­ing a state­ment by the admit­ted killer, Daley’s co-defen­dant, that he had act­ed alone. Dailey stands to be either the 100 death-row pris­on­er put to death by Florida since exe­cu­tions resumed in the 1970s or the state’s 30^th death-row exoneree.

Dailey was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the 1985 killing of 14-year-old Shelley Boggio. The pros­e­cu­tion admit­ted to the jury at tri­al that no ​“phys­i­cal evi­dence,” ​“no fin­ger­prints,” and ​“no hair or fibers” linked Dailey — who served one tour of duty in Korea and three more in Vietnam — to the crime. Instead, he was con­vict­ed based on the tes­ti­mo­ny of self-inter­est­ed wit­ness­es, includ­ing the lat­er-recant­ed tes­ti­mo­ny of his co-defen­dant, Jack Pearcy, and tes­ti­mo­ny from three jail­house infor­mants whom police pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion about the mur­ders and who received reduced charges for say­ing Dailey had con­fessed to them.

Official mis­con­duct and false accu­sa­tion are the lead­ing caus­es of wrong­ful cap­i­tal con­vic­tions. A DPIC review found that at least one of those fac­tors has been present in at least 18 of the 29 cas­es since 1973 in which wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed Florida death row pris­on­ers have lat­er been exon­er­at­ed. An analy­sis by the Northwestern University School of Law Center on Wrongful Convictions of the first 111 death-row exon­er­a­tions found that false ​“snitch tes­ti­mo­ny” had con­tributed to 45.9% of those wrong­ful capital convictions.

At the time of Boggio’s mur­der, Dailey lived in an extra room at the home Pearcy shared with his girl­friend. A knife belong­ing to Pearcy was found near Boggio’s body, but when he was ques­tioned about the crime, he told police that Dailey had killed her. Pearcy was tried for the crime first and con­vict­ed, but the jury reject­ed a death sen­tence and rec­om­mend­ed life. According to Dailey’s attor­neys, ​“The mur­der was grue­some and the state was under intense pres­sure to obtain the death penal­ty against the two men it elect­ed to charge. This pres­sure only inten­si­fied after Pearcy’s jury rec­om­mend­ed life, not death. But the state was aware that it did not have suf­fi­cient evi­dence to secure even a con­vic­tion against Dailey, let alone a death sentence.” 

One month after Pearcy’s tri­al, a detec­tive vis­it­ed pris­on­ers in the unit in which Dailey was incar­cer­at­ed await­ing tri­al. The pris­on­ers say the detec­tive showed them news arti­cles about the mur­der and asked them if Dailey had told them any­thing about the case. Just days lat­er, three men came for­ward claim­ing that Dailey had con­fessed to the killing. Each of the men received ben­e­fits from the state in exchange for their tes­ti­mo­ny, but tes­ti­fied false­ly that they had not received any preferential treatment. 

One of those men, Paul Skalnik, was a for­mer police offi­cer who was a pros­e­cu­tion infor­mant in at least six cas­es. Dailey’s lawyers described Skalnik as ​“a noto­ri­ous snitch with an estab­lished his­to­ry of patho­log­i­cal decep­tion includ­ing at least twen­ty-five con­vic­tions for crimes of dis­hon­esty.” Skalnik, who claimed at tri­al that the charges against him ​“were grand theft, coun­selor, not mur­der, not rape, no phys­i­cal vio­lence in my life,” had in fact been charged in 1982 with ​“lewd and las­civ­i­ous con­duct involv­ing a 12-year-old girl.” His coop­er­a­tion in oth­er cas­es had result­ed in pros­e­cu­tors drop­ping those charges. 

Perhaps most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, Pearcy recant­ed his state­ments that Dailey had helped him mur­der Boggio. On April 20, 2017, he signed an affi­davit stat­ing, ​“James Dailey was not present when Shelly Boggio was killed. I alone am respon­si­ble for Shelly Boggio’s death.” This was at least the fourth time he had made such an admis­sion. On three occa­sions span­ning twen­ty years, Pearcy told fel­low pris­on­ers that he had com­mit­ted the crime him­self, and that Dailey had noth­ing to do with it. Seth Miller, one of Dailey’s attor­neys and direc­tor of the Innocence Project of Florida, said, ​“Jack Pearcy, a man with a his­to­ry of vio­lence against women, has admit­ted at least four times that he alone was respon­si­ble for the death of Shelly Boggio.” Dailey, on the oth­er hand, had no pri­or record of vio­lence against women and tri­al tes­ti­mo­ny indi­cat­ed that he near­ly died from eleven stab wounds he suf­fered break­ing up a fight involv­ing a friend’s daugh­ter and her boyfriend. ​“Justice has been served in this case: Mr. Pearcy is serv­ing a life sen­tence,” Miller said. ​“The courts and the gov­er­nor must stop Mr. Dailey’s exe­cu­tion before it’s too late.”

Dailey’s case has drawn sup­port from some con­ser­v­a­tive and reli­gious groups con­cerned about a poten­tial wrong­ful exe­cu­tion. Hannah Cox, National Director of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, wrote that ​“pro­ce­dur­al obsta­cles” have blocked courts from hear­ing the evi­dence of Dailey’s inno­cence. ​“Dailey has more going for him than many defen­dants,” Cox wrote. ​“He has attor­neys — real­ly good ones. He has sig­nif­i­cant evi­dence of inno­cence. He was even exclud­ed as a source of the exist­ing foren­sic evi­dence — a hair found in the victim’s hand. He is of sound mind. And the ​‘evi­dence’ used to con­vict him is shaky at best. But will it be enough to stop the state from exe­cut­ing him? That remains to be seen.” 

Rev. Robert Schneider and Sabrina Burton Schultz, mem­bers of the Life, Justice and Advocacy Committee of the Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg, called the case ​“shock­ing.” In an op-ed for the Tampa Bay Times, the two wrote: ​“The fam­i­ly of Shelly Boggio suf­fered an unimag­in­able loss, and Floridians should pray for their heal­ing and an eas­ing of their pain. Taking anoth­er life, espe­cial­ly an inno­cent one, will only com­pound this tragedy.” Saying that “[h]aving a cul­ture of life in our state means hold­ing life at all stages sacred,” they urged Gov. DeSantis to ​“search his heart and do the right thing by with­draw­ing the death war­rant in Mr. Dailey’s case. There is too much doubt to pro­ceed with this exe­cu­tion,” they said.