Prosecutors, Catholic Bishops, and Conservative Group Submit Briefs Asking U.S. Supreme Court to Review Case of James Dailey

Three groups, rep­re­sent­ing pros­e­cu­tors, the Catholic Church, and polit­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tives, have filed briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court sup­port­ing the efforts of Florida death-row pris­on­er James Dailey (pic­tured) to obtain judi­cial review of his inno­cence claim. Dailey filed a peti­tion for cer­tio­rari on January 10, 2020 ask­ing the Supreme Court to hear his case, after the Florida courts refused to con­sid­er evi­dence that anoth­er man had con­fessed to the murder. 

Dailey, a vet­er­an who served three tours of duty in Vietnam and one tour in Korea, has long main­tained his inno­cence in the abduc­tion and mur­der of 14-year-old Shelly Boggio. No phys­i­cal evi­dence linked him to the crime, but he was con­vict­ed on the tes­ti­mo­ny of his co-defen­dant, Jack Pearcy, and three jail­house infor­mants. Pearcy has since recant­ed his tes­ti­mo­ny against Dailey and said on sev­er­al occa­sions that he alone killed Boggio. Each of the jail­house infor­mants received ben­e­fits from pros­e­cu­tors in exchange for their tes­ti­mo­ny, but false­ly tes­ti­fied that they had not received pref­er­en­tial treat­ment. One infor­mant, Paul Skalnik, is a sex offend­er and con man who has since been revealed to be a pro­lif­ic prison infor­mant. His tes­ti­mo­ny has been used to con­vict at least 37 defen­dants, receiv­ing reduced sen­tences and even hav­ing charges against him dropped as a result of his coop­er­a­tion with police and prosecutors. 

“No court has heard all the evi­dence of James Dailey’s inno­cence, includ­ing the repeat­ed con­fes­sions of anoth­er man who admits that he killed the vic­tim by him­self and is serv­ing a life sen­tence for it,” said Josh Dubin, one of the lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Dailey in his cur­rent appeal. ​“The U.S. Supreme Court should review Mr. Dailey’s case and make sure he receives a new trial.”

An unlike­ly com­bi­na­tion of sup­port­ers have joined Dailey in urg­ing the Court to grant him that tri­al. On January 17, 2020, eight cur­rent and for­mer pros­e­cu­tors — includ­ing three for­mer state attor­neys gen­er­al — filed an ami­cus curi­ae brief call­ing on the Court to inter­vene to pre­vent Dailey’s exe­cu­tion based upon ​“inher­ent­ly unre­li­able” jail­house infor­mant tes­ti­mo­ny and false claims made by tri­al pros­e­cu­tors about that testimony.

The same day, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops filed a friend-of-the-court brief describ­ing Dailey’s case as pre­sent­ing the ​“pro­found moral ques­tion” of ​“whether our soci­ety can per­mit the exe­cu­tion of a per­son with­out requir­ing a new tri­al when he has come for­ward with per­sua­sive evi­dence of actu­al inno­cence.” The Bishops wrote that pun­ish­ing the inno­cent is a ​“rad­i­cal injus­tice [that] is par­tic­u­lar­ly griev­ous in the case of a sen­tence of death” and urged the Court to grant Dailey a new trial.

Dailey’s peti­tion also drew sup­port from a brief filed by the advo­ca­cy group, Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty (“CCATDP”), a net­work of polit­i­cal and social con­ser­v­a­tives who, the orga­ni­za­tion says, ​“believe that the death penal­ty con­tra­dicts con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues because it is an inef­fi­cient, arbi­trary, and waste­ful sys­tem that deval­ues human life.” CCATDP’s brief, filed January 31, expressed the orga­ni­za­tion’s ​“deep[ ] con­cern[ ]” that Florida intend­ed to ​“exe­cute a per­son who did not have a mean­ing­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty to ful­ly present evi­dence of his inno­cence.” Stressing that ​“due process is essen­tial to pro­tect­ing cit­i­zens from arbi­trary gov­ern­ment action,” CCATP said the Florida Supreme Court had ​“close[d] its eyes to over­whelm­ing evi­dence of [Dailey’s] innocence.”

The con­ser­v­a­tive group wrote that “[e]vidence shows that the mod­ern judi­cial sys­tem has an unac­cept­ably high rate of wrong­ful con­vic­tions and that Florida’s sys­tem is par­tic­u­lar­ly prone to sen­tenc­ing inno­cent peo­ple to death. This very case,” the brief said, ​“demon­strates how offi­cial mis­con­duct and per­ju­ri­ous tes­ti­mo­ny can lead to wrong­ful con­vic­tions” and how the appli­ca­tion of pro­ce­dur­al rules to pre­vent pris­on­ers from pre­sent­ing crit­i­cal evi­dence ​“can obscure the truth, con­trary to the ends of justice.”