[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----FLORIDA

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 8





FLORIDA----imminent execution

Appeals Court Rejects Patrick Hannon Stay, Will Be 26th Executed On Gov. 
Scott’s Watch



Patrick Hannon is to be executed at 6 p.m. Wednesday at a Florida state prison 
near Starke.

Just hours before the scheduled execution of Death Row inmate Patrick Hannon, a 
federal appeals court Wednesday rejected his request for a stay.

Hannon, scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Florida State Prison, 
argued that new state death-penalty requirements related to the unanimity of 
juries should be applied to his case.

But a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected 
Hannon’s argument, pointing to precedent from a case this year in which the 
state executed Death Row inmate Cary Michael Lambrix. That precedent, which 
stemmed from a Florida Supreme Court ruling, effectively says the new 
sentencing requirements should not be applied to cases before 2002.

Hannon was convicted and sentenced to death in the 1991 murders of two men in 
Hillsborough County.

“There (in the Lambrix case), we held that jurists of reason would not find 
debatable the Florida Supreme Court’s rejection of the claim that the 
nonretroactive application of Florida’s new sentencing statute violates the 
Equal Protection Clause, the Due Process Clause, or the Eighth Amendment (of 
the U.S. Constitution),” said the ruling by appeals-court judges Stanley 
Marcus, William Pryor and Beverly Martin.

Gov. Rick Scott in October scheduled the Wednesday execution of Hannon, 53, who 
was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in the slayings of Brandon 
Snider and Robert Carter. Hannon’s execution would be the 26th on Scott’s 
watch, by far the most of any governor in the modern era.

Hannon and two other men went to the apartment where Snider and Carter lived on 
Jan. 10, 1991. After one of the other men attacked and stabbed Snider, Hannon 
was accused of cutting Snider’s throat, according to court documents. Hannon, 
26 at the time, was then accused of fatally shooting Carter, who had tried to 
hide under a bed.

The appeals-court ruling Wednesday was rooted in a series of legal and 
legislative decisions that began in January 2016, when the U.S. Supreme Court 
found Florida’s death-penalty sentencing system unconstitutional. The crux of 
the U.S. Supreme Court decision was that the system gave too much power to 
judges, instead of juries, in sentencing people to death.

Resulting Florida Supreme Court rulings and legislation now require juries to 
unanimously recommend the death penalty before judges can impose death 
sentences. Juries also are required to unanimously agree on critical findings 
before death sentences can be imposed.

The Florida Supreme Court made the new sentencing requirements apply to cases 
since 2002. That is when the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling known as Ring 
v. Arizona that was a premise for striking down Florida’s death-penalty 
sentencing system in 2016.

A jury unanimously recommended that Hannon be put to death, but it is not clear 
whether jurors unanimously agreed on any of the critical findings.

While agreeing Wednesday on the precedent issue, Martin wrote a concurring 
opinion that said Hannon’s scheduled execution was a “stark illustration of the 
problems with Florida’s retroactivity rule.”

“No one disputes that he was sentenced to death by a process we now recognize 
as unconstitutional,” Martin wrote. “Neither does anyone dispute that others 
who were sentenced to death under those same unconstitutional procedures are 
eligible for resentencing under Florida’s new law. The Florida Supreme Court’s 
retroactivity analysis therefore leaves the difference between life and death 
to turn on `either fatal or fortuitous accidents of timing.’ ”

(source: flaglerlive.com)