Calling his evi­dence of inno­cence either imma­te­r­i­al or inad­mis­si­ble, the Florida Supreme Court on September 23, 2021 denied death-row pris­on­er James Daileys post-con­vic­tion chal­lenge to his con­vic­tion for the 1985 mur­der of a teenage girl. 

Over a strong dis­sent by Justice Jorge Labarga, the Court ruled that a sworn dec­la­ra­tion by Jack Pearcy, lat­er recant­ed, that he alone had com­mit­ted the mur­der, was inad­mis­si­ble and could not pro­vide a legal basis to over­turn Dailey’s con­vic­tion. It also reject­ed Dailey’s claim that pros­e­cu­tors know­ing­ly elicit­ed false tes­ti­mo­ny from their lead wit­ness, Paul Skalnik, that he had nev­er been charged with any crime of vio­lence and then failed to cor­rect Skalnik’s tes­ti­mo­ny that he had nev­er faced charges of rape or mur­der and had no phys­i­cal vio­lence in my life.” The court said that Dailey’s dis­cov­ery that his pros­e­cu­tor had writ­ten notes about Skalnik’s tes­ti­mo­ny in which he crossed out the words sex­u­al assault(s)” did not con­sti­tute new evi­dence because Dailey was pre­vi­ous­ly aware of the notes, though not their author, and Skalnik had been impeached on other matters.

In dis­sent, Justice Labarga not­ed that a sig­nif­i­cant com­po­nent of the State’s case” rest­ed on tes­ti­mo­ny from jail­house infor­mants that was unsup­port­ed by any foren­sic evi­dence. Dailey’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence, he said, were com­pro­mised by a cloud of unre­li­able inmate tes­ti­mo­ny.” Despite Pearcy’s sub­se­quent refusal to repeat his con­fes­sion in court or depo­si­tion tes­ti­mo­ny, Labarga said, his admis­sion to being sole­ly respon­si­ble for the mur­der, cou­pled with the lack of sub­stan­tial inde­pen­dent evi­dence to cor­rob­o­rate the tes­ti­mo­ny of the jail­house infor­mants,” suf­fi­cient­ly under­mined the case against Dailey. 

While final­i­ty in judi­cial pro­ceed­ings is impor­tant to the func­tion of the judi­cial branch,” Labarga wrote, that inter­est can nev­er over­whelm the imper­a­tive that the death penal­ty not be wrong­ly imposed. Since Florida rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty in 1972, thir­ty peo­ple have been exon­er­at­ed from death row [who] … would have even­tu­al­ly been put to death for mur­ders they did not com­mit. This num­ber of exon­er­a­tions, the high­est in the nation, affirms why it is so impor­tant to get this case right,” he said. 

Sources

Dan Sullivan, Florida Supreme Court upholds James Dailey’s death sen­tence, Tampa Bay Times, September 232021.