There will be no death penal­ty in the first cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion autho­rized under the admin­is­tra­tion of Orange and Osceola County, Florida, State Attorney Aramis Ayala. In a case that rekin­dled the polit­i­cal con­fronta­tion between State Attorney Ayala and Governor Rick Scott over the use of the death penal­ty, Emerita Mapp (pic­tured) plead­ed no con­test on December 8 to one count of mur­der and a sec­ond count of attempt­ed mur­der in exchange for a sen­tence of life with­out parole. The plea deal came just three days before the tri­al judge was sched­uled to rule on Mapp’s motion argu­ing that the court should bar the death penal­ty in her case because the state attorney’s office had missed the fil­ing dead­line for seek­ing the death penal­ty. In March, State Attorney Ayala announced that her office would not seek the death penal­ty, say­ing that the use of the pun­ish­ment was ​“not in the best inter­ests of this com­mu­ni­ty or in the best inter­ests of jus­tice.” Scott respond­ed by remov­ing Ayala’s office from more than two dozen poten­tial death-penal­ty cas­es over the course of sev­er­al months, and replac­ing her with Lake County State Attorney Brad King. The move, which was opposed by civ­il rights groups and the Florida black leg­isla­tive cau­cus, had unspo­ken racial under­tones: Ayala, a Democrat, is Florida’s only black elect­ed state attor­ney; King, a Republican, is white and a vocal pro­po­nent of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Ayala sued Scott, alleg­ing that he had over­stepped his pow­ers, but in August 2017, the Florida Supreme Court upheld his actions, hold­ing that Scott had act­ed ​“well with­in the bounds of the Governor’s broad author­i­ty.” Ayala said she respect­ed the rul­ing and announced the for­ma­tion of a pan­el to decide in which cas­es to pur­sue cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Mapp’s case was the first in which the pan­el had autho­rized the death penal­ty, but that autho­riza­tion came 22 days after the dead­line for pro­vid­ing notice of cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion. That prompt­ed anoth­er round of crit­i­cisms trad­ed between Scott and Ayala as to who was to blame for miss­ing the deadline.

It is not unusu­al for cap­i­tal charges to be resolved by plea deals. In May 2017, after the State Attorney’s office in Bradenton announced its inten­tion to seek the death penal­ty in a dou­ble-mur­der case, that office reached a plea deal with the defen­dant, Terez Jones, for a 25-year prison sen­tence. In January 2017, Brevard-Seminole State Attorney Phil Archer accept­ed a guilty plea to a sen­tence of life with­out parole from a 20-year-old defen­dant he had derid­ed as a ​“scum­bag” for killing an 81-year-old woman. That deal was reached with Davion Stewart on the eve of tri­al, after the tri­al judge had order the tri­al to go for­ward even though Florida had no valid death-sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dures in place at the time. In one of the cas­es Governor Scott had removed from Ayala, State Attorney King agreed to forego a cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing tri­al for William White in a 1978 mur­der, accept­ing a plea deal for a sen­tence of life with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.

(K. Torralva, ​“Defendant takes plea deal for life in prison in Ayala’s first death-penal­ty case,” Orlando Sentinel, December 8, 2017; M. Meredith, ​“No con­test plea ren­ders Scott-Ayala dis­pute about death penal­ty fil­ing invalid,” WESH-TV, December 8, 2017; ​“Missed court dead­line could keep Ayala from seek­ing death penal­ty in Kissimmee mur­der case,” WFTV, November 17, 2017; J. De Leon, ​“Murderer dodges death penal­ty in home inva­sion slay­ings,” Bradenton Herald, May 2, 2017; R. Stutzman, ​“Guilty plea cuts short Sanford death penal­ty tri­al,” Orlando Sentinel, January 3, 2017.) See Arbitrariness.

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