News Brief — Florida Supreme Court Denies Relief in Three Death Penalty Cases

NEWS (2/​13/​20): The Florida Supreme Court issued opin­ions on February 13, 2020 deny­ing relief to pris­on­ers in three death penalty cases.

The court upheld Anthony Mungins con­vic­tion and death sen­tence despite his asser­tion that pros­e­cu­tors had uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly with­held excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence and pre­sent­ed false tes­ti­mo­ny. Mungin had argued that pros­e­cu­tors know­ing­ly pre­sent­ed false tes­ti­mo­ny from an offi­cer who claimed at tri­al that he had seen two spent shell cas­ings in a stolen car linked to the mur­der. In fact, con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous police records pre­pared by the offi­cer and with­held from the defense indi­cat­ed that the offi­cer had seen noth­ing vis­i­ble.” The court declined to address the mer­its of Mungin’s claims, rul­ing that he had wait­ed too long before raising them.


The court upheld the death sen­tence imposed on Wayne Doty in his cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing retri­al for a prison mur­der. Doty’s lawyer on direct appeal raised just one issue relat­ing to his death sen­tence: whether the tri­al court was required to instruct the jury that it must find beyond a rea­son­able doubt that the aggra­vat­ing fac­tors were suf­fi­cient to war­rant a death sen­tence and that they out­weighed the mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors. The court reject­ed that claim, hold­ing that those find­ings are not sub­ject to the beyond a rea­son­able doubt stan­dard of proof.”


In Marvin Cannons case, the court upheld his con­vic­tion, declin­ing to address his claim that pros­e­cu­tors had uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly struck black jurors from ser­vice in his case on the basis of race. The court said Cannon’s claim was pro­ce­du­ral­ly barred because, even though his tri­al lawyer had object­ed to the jury strikes, coun­sel failed to renew the objec­tions pri­or to the jury being sworn.” There were no death sen­tenc­ing issues in the appeal because the pros­e­cu­tion had not appealed the tri­al court’s deci­sion to grant Cannon a new sen­tenc­ing hear­ing because the jury’s sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tion had not been unanimous.