Florida Prisoner Sentenced to Life After Third Non-Unanimous Death Penalty Verdict

After near­ly two decades of cap­i­tal tri­als and death-penal­ty rever­sals, for­mer Florida death-row pris­on­er David Snelgrove has been resen­tenced to life in prison with­out parole. His three sen­tenc­ing tri­als pro­vid­ed a barom­e­ter of the impact of the United States Supreme Court and Florida Supreme Court deci­sions in Hurst v. Florida and Hurst v. State, and the lengths to which pros­e­cu­tors were will­ing to go in attempts to keep uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sen­tenced pris­on­ers on death row.

Before his lat­est sen­tenc­ing tri­al, tri­al judges had twice sen­tenced Snelgrove to death despite non-unan­i­mous sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tions by his juries. The jury vote that result­ed in his life sen­tence on January 14, 2020 was also non-unanimous.

In January 2016, in the case of Timothy Hurst, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida’s death-sen­tenc­ing statute, which had giv­en sen­tenc­ing juries a lim­it­ed advi­so­ry role and left the ulti­mate fact-find­ing and sen­tenc­ing author­i­ty to the tri­al judge. The Court ruled that those sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dures vio­lat­ed a cap­i­tal defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial.

In response to the Supreme Court’s deci­sion, the Florida leg­is­la­ture amend­ed the law to per­mit the tri­al judge to impose a death sen­tence only if the jury unan­i­mous­ly found at least one cir­cum­stance that made a defen­dant eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty and ten or more jurors rec­om­mend­ed death. However, months lat­er, in October 2016, the Florida Supreme Court struck down that statute as vio­lat­ing the state con­sti­tu­tion­al require­ment of unan­i­mous jury ver­dicts. The leg­is­la­ture then amend­ed the state cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing law to require a unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tion for death before the judge could impose a death sentence.

Snelgrove was cap­i­tal­ly charged for mur­der­ing an elder­ly cou­ple in Flagler County in 2000. He was con­vict­ed in 2002 and the tri­al judge imposed the death penal­ty after a 7 – 5 jury rec­om­men­da­tion for death. That death sen­tence was over­turned because the jury issued a com­bined rec­om­men­da­tion of sen­tence on its ver­dict form, rather than issu­ing indi­vid­ual rec­om­men­da­tions on each mur­der count. Snelgrove was then resen­tenced to death in 2008 after an 8 – 4 jury rec­om­men­da­tion for death. The Florida courts then over­turned that sen­tence in light of the two Hurst decisions.

Despite the sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of jurors vot­ing for life in each of Snelgrove’s pri­or sen­tenc­ing tri­als and Florida’s new jury una­nim­i­ty require­ment, Flagler County pros­e­cu­tors again sought the death penal­ty against Snelgrove in 2020. In a week­long sen­tenc­ing tri­al, the defense pre­sent­ed more than four dozen mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances as rea­sons to spare Snelgrove’s life. They includ­ed evi­dence of fetal alco­hol expo­sure from his mother’s drink­ing while preg­nant that had left him with a head small­er than more than 90 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion; brain scans that revealed sig­nif­i­cant con­tin­u­ing brain dam­age; repeat­ed beat­ings by his father, place­ment in spe­cial edu­ca­tion class­es for emo­tion­al­ly dis­abled stu­dents; and untreat­ed addic­tion at the time of the murders.

“Life is pre­cious,” Snelgrove’s lawyer told the jury in his clos­ing argu­ment. ​“A vote for life does not mean that you’re demean­ing [the vic­tims]. It just means that you think it’s the cor­rect fate for this case and these facts.” After near­ly five hours of delib­er­a­tions, the jury indi­cat­ed that it was split on the appro­pri­ate sen­tence, with three jurors vot­ing for life.

In a col­umn in the Flagler County new out­let Flagler Live, titled For Seven Days, Flagler Sees Florida’s Broken Death Penalty Machinery in Action, com­men­ta­tor Pierre Tristam crit­i­cized the waste­ful futil­i­ty of the prosecution’s insis­tence on pur­su­ing death in Snelgrove’s case. Tristam called the death penal­ty ​“a pre­med­i­tat­ed and chore­o­graphed act of tor­ture and ter­ror that brings nei­ther clo­sure to fam­i­ly sur­vivors nor deter­rence, two ratio­nales still braid­ing the state’s noose.”

Three days lat­er, anoth­er Florida for­mer death-row defen­dant was resen­tenced to life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole in an unre­lat­ed dou­ble mur­der. In 2015, Barry Trynell Davis, Jr. was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sen­tenced to death fol­low­ing non-unan­i­mous (9 – 3 and 10 – 2) jury rec­om­men­da­tions for death on two counts of mur­der. The jury vote at his January 17, 2020 resen­tenc­ing was not reported.