Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of November 23, 2020

NEWS (11/​26/​20) — Florida: A Santa Rosa County judge has sen­tenced Thomas Fletcher to death for mur­der­ing his cell­mate in a coun­ty prison. Fletcher’s case is emblem­at­ic of recent cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing trends in which death sen­tences have been imposed dis­pro­por­tion­al­ly against defen­dants who waived key procedural protections.

Fletcher stran­gled his cell­mate, Kenneth Davis, after Davis told Fletcher he was think­ing about com­mit­ting sui­cide. State attor­ney Bill Eddins told reporters that Fletcher, who was 24 years into a life sen­tence, con­fessed that he com­mit­ted the crime so he could be sen­tenced to death. Fletcher plead­ed guilty in August 2019, waived his right to a jury sen­tenc­ing, and asked for the death penal­ty, which he called his ​“retire­ment plan.”

NEWS (11/​25/​20) — Florida: the Florida Supreme Court has denied state pros­e­cu­tors’ efforts to rein­state the death sen­tences of Bessman Okafor and Michael James Jackson with­out afford­ing them the cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing hear­ings pre­vi­ous­ly ordered by the court.

Okafor’s and Jackson’s death sen­tences had been over­turned under the state court’s 2016 deci­sion in Hurst v. State, which held that death sen­tences based upon non-unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tions for death vio­lat­ed the Florida and fed­er­al con­sti­tu­tions. In January 2020, after dozens of death sen­tences had been over­turned, the Florida Supreme Court reced­ed from its deci­sion in Hurst and applied that change in the law to pend­ing cas­es. Prosecutors then attempt­ed to can­cel the penal­ty-phase tri­als and rein­state the death sen­tences of those pris­on­ers who had not yet com­plet­ed the resentencing process.

Rejecting the pros­e­cu­tors’ posi­tion, the court stat­ed that once an order vacat­ing a death sen­tence has become final, ​“nei­ther we nor the tri­al court can law­ful­ly rein­state that sentence.”

NEWS (11/​25/​20) – Texas: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has ruled that Geronimo Gutierrez is inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty because of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty and has resen­tenced him to life imprisonment. 

Gutierrez is one of numer­ous intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled death row pris­on­ers in Texas whose claims of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty were ini­tial­ly reject­ed by the Texas courts under an unsci­en­tif­ic and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al def­i­n­i­tion of the dis­or­der that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down in Moore v. Texas in 2017. At least eight for­mer death-row pris­on­ers in Texas have since been resen­tenced to life after their cas­es were recon­sid­ered under Moore. However, more than a dozen pris­on­ers whose chal­lenges to their death sen­tences were reject­ed under Texas’ uncon­sti­tu­tion­al def­i­n­i­tion of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty have already been executed.