The office
of State Attorney Aramis Ayala — who once said she wouldn’t seek the death penalty in any case — announces that it will, after all, seek capital punishment in an upcoming trial.
The death-penalty review panel at Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala’s office unanimously agreed Wednesday to seek capital punishment in a recent homicide case.
Chief Assistant State Attorney Deborah Barra made the announcement Thursday at a luncheon hosted by the Orange County Bar Association in downtown Orlando. She did not name the defendant but said the assistant state attorney assigned to that case is preparing to file a notice to seek the death penalty.
“We recently met to start the process of actually reviewing the cases,” Barra said. “I can tell you that we are going through each case that is currently assigned to our office since January. We are reviewing all of the homicides that came in to see if they would qualify.
“And I can tell you that just recently — in fact, yesterday — the board met and we were unanimous that a case does qualify for the death penalty. The state attorney has been informed.”
Ayala’s spokeswoman, Eryka Washington, declined to name the defendant as well because the notice has not yet been filed with the court.
Ayala, who took office in January, announced in March that she will not seek the death penalty in any case. Gov. Rick Scott reacted by signing away 29 first-degree murder cases assigned to Ayala’s office, giving them to Ocala-based State Attorney Brad King. Defendants in many of those cases were already on death row but still had ongoing appeals.
Six of the cases were holdovers from Ayala’s predecessors that had not yet gone to trial because Florida’s death-penalty statute was twice struck down by courts. The old statute did not require a unanimous jury recommendation when deciding whether defendants should be sentenced to death or life in prison.
Ayala sued Scott to get the cases back, arguing that taking the cases away was a blow to her prosecutorial discretion. In August, the Florida Supreme Court sided with Scott in a 5-2 decision. Supreme Court Justice C. Alan Lawson wrote in the majority opinion that the blanket policy to never seek the death penalty was not an example of prosecutorial discretion, but rather the absence of it.
Ayala decided not to try to get the 29 cases back. Prosecutors had already brought two of the pending cases to trial under King, and juries in both recommended the death penalty unanimously.
One day after the Florida Supreme Court released its decision, Ayala established a death-penalty review board made up of seven assistant state attorneys in her office. The members include Barra, Kenneth Nunnelley, Kelly Hicks, Candra Moore, Gabrielle Sanders and Chris Smith. The seventh member is whichever prosecutor is assigned to the case the board is reviewing.
That prosecutor also is tasked with communicating with the victims’ families.
Scott has not taken any cases away from Ayala since the panel was established.
“We’re aware of her statement through the media. The governor continues to stand with victims of crime and their families,” Scott’s spokesman, John Tupps, said in a statement Thursday.
The review board has met twice so far, Barra said Thursday: once to establish procedures, and again this week to look at every homicide case the office has received since January. That did not include some higher-profile cases already assigned to King’s office, such as that of Markeith Loyd, the man accused of killing his pregnant ex-girlfriend, Sade Dixon, and Orlando Police Lt. Debra Clayton.