Killers on death row may live

Some could get new sentences

There’s more than one way to leave death row, and some of South Florida’s most notorious killers are looking to make their exit alive.

The convicted murderers include: the killer of a Broward County deputy; a child killer who raped a little girl in front of her even younger sister before strangling them both; and a man who recruited his son to help him torment and kill his landlord. They are seeking to have new juries consider whether the state should put them to death.

Their legal window opened in December, when the Florida Supreme Court used a June 24, 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision as a cutoff to determine which death row inmates may be entitled to new sentencing hearings.

That 2002 decision, Ring v. Arizona, held that juries, not judges, were required to find the aggravating factors necessary to impose capital punishment. In a series of federal and state rulings last year, Florida’s death penalty process was overturned twice — first because judges still had more power than

juries, and later because the law failed to require a unanimous jury vote.

Gov. Rick Scott signed a new death penalty law last Tuesday, passed by the state legislature to resolve the issue for future cases.

But for those whose executions were ordered between 2002 and 2016, the Florida Supreme Court practically invited attorneys to challenge the sentence.

Palm Beach County has not sent anyone to death row since 1998, but Broward has sent nine since the Ring decision. Four others had appeals pending that were finalized after 2002. Four leave death row, one remains

Four of the Broward inmates who fit in the 2002-2016 window have already passed the first hurdle — Howard Steven Ault, Gerhard Hojan, Charles Anderson, and Lancelot Armstrong have each been granted a new sentencing hearing. Prosecutors are asking the state supreme court to reconsider those decisions.

Ault, 49, is the Fort Lauderdale man convicted of murdering DeAnn Emerald Mu’min, 11, and her sister, Alicia Sybilla Jones, 7, after luring them to his Fort Lauderdale home with the promise of Halloween candy. Originally sentenced to death in 1999, Ault was granted a rehearing and sentenced to death again in 2007. The jury voted 10-2 in favor of execution.

Hojan, 41, was sentenced to death for the 2002 murders of Christina Delarosa and Willie Absolu at a Davie Waffle House. According to trial testimony, Hojan ordered three victims onto their knees in the restaurant’s freezer. The first victim survived. Absolu, 28, was killed instantly. Delarosa, 17, scrambled under a storage rack, screaming for her infant child when Hojan fired two fatal shots.

Hojan’s jury voted 9-3 in favor of putting him to death.

Anderson, now 63, had

already pleaded guilty in 1992 to attempting to sexually assault his 16-year-old stepdaughter, Keinya Smith. Two years later, he got into a fight with her and, after she threatened to go to the police, drove her to US 27 in western Broward County, ran over her with his car and left her to die.

A jury voted 8-4 in 1999 to sentence Anderson to death. He was eligible to seek a rehearing because his initial appeals extended beyond 2002.

Armstrong, 53, was sentenced to death in 1991 for the slaying of Broward Sheriff’s Deputy John “Jack” Greeney, 47, during a 1990 robbery at a Church’s Fried Chicken on West Broward Boulevard and Northwest 34th Avenue.

The first jury voted 9-3 in favor of execution. A co-defendant was sentenced to life in prison for his role. The Supreme Court overturned his sentence in 2003 because jurors had been told about a prior conviction against Armstrong that was later overturned.

The second jury listened to the evidence in 2007 and decided, again by a 9-3 vote, in favor of death.

For the inmates, being in the 2002-2016 window is not enough to guarantee a new sentencing hearing.

Richard Knight, 38, convicted of murdering a pregnant woman and her 4-year-old daughter in Coral Springs in 2000 and sentenced to death in 2007, is not entitled to a new hearing, the Florida Supreme Court ruled in late January.

In Knight’s case, a unanimous jury found all the aggravating factors necessary to justify a death sentence, even though that was not a requirement under the law at the time. The remaining inmates

Prosecutors anticipate sentencing appeals from the remaining inmates sentenced between 2002 and 2015. Alex Pagan

Jurors voted 7-5 to send Pagan, now 47, to the electric chair for the 1993 executionstyle murders of Freddie Lee Jones and his 5-year-old stepson, Michael Lynn. Pagan and a co-defendant were robbing Jones’ home in Miramar. They tied up the victims,

along with Jones’ wife and the couple’s other son, who was 18 months old. The wife and other son were shot and survived. Pagan’s co-defendant, Willie Graham, was sentenced to 31 years in prison.

The initial round of appeals in Pagan’s case extended past the 2002 Ring decision, making him eligible to seek a new hearing. A motion seeking the new hearing was filed in January. Robert Rimmer

Rimmer, now 49, and an accomplice were robbing a stereo store in Wilton Manors on May 2, 1998, and Rimmer decided to shoot the store’s owner, Aaron Knight, 31, and employee Bradley Krause, 19, in the back of the head. Three customers, including a 3-year-old child, were left unharmed. On his way out, according to trial testimony, he looked at the customers and said, “Thank you for cooperating. Have a nice day.”

The accomplice, Kevin Parker, 49, is serving a life sentence. Jurors voted 9-3 against the death penalty in his case. The vote to execute Rimmer, by the same jury, was also 9-3. Although he was sentenced in 1999, his initial appeals extended beyond 2002. A motion seeking the new hearing was filed in January. Lucious Boyd

Driving a church van on Dec. 5, 1998 in Deerfield Beach, Boyd came across Dawnia Dacosta, 21, whose car had run out of gas on Interstate 95. Boyd, son of the founder of Boyd funeral homes, offered Dacosta a ride back to her car from the gas station where he found her.

Her body was found two days later near an Oakland Park trash bin. She had been raped and stabbed 36 times with a screwdriver.

The recommendation to execute Boyd, now 57, was unanimous. He was sentenced to death three days before the pivotal 2002 U.S. Supreme Court Ring decision, but his initial appeals were not final until years later. But the court has not made a final decision whether Boyd should get a new hearing anyway or whether he, like Knight, should stay on death row.

Ronnie Williams

Williams was convicted of murdering Lisashantill Dyke, 18, who was babysitting for her boyfriend’s sister in Wilton Manors on Jan. 26, 1993. Williams burst into Dyke’s apartment that night looking for his ex-girlfriend, and when he didn’t find her, he fought with and stabbed Dyke repeatedly. Dyke was pregnant at the time of her death. Her baby survived, brain damaged.

After three trials, Williams was convicted and sentenced to death with a 10-2 recommendation from the jury in 2004. As of Friday, no motion seeking a new sentencing hearing had been filed. Eric Patrick

Patrick, 53, has been on death row since 2009. A jury convicted him of the 2005 murder of Steven Schumacher, 72, in Oakland Park. A 10-time convicted felon, Patrick told investigators that he hog-tied, beat and strangled Schumacher during a robbery because Schumacher made a pass at him. The vote in favor of execution was 7-5. His motion for a new hearing was filed in February. Darious Wilcox

Nimoy Johnson, 27, was the owner of a Lauderhill car wash who was found bound, beaten and shot to death in his Inverrary Village home on Feb. 3, 2008. Wilcox was arrested a week later in Miami. The case generated little publicity, and the jury’s recommendation for death was by a 7-5 vote. He was sentenced in 2011. Wilcox, now 39, is in the process of challenging his sentence and conviction on separate grounds, which is not uncommon in death penalty cases. His next court date is scheduled for May 15. Randy W. Tundidor

Tundidor, now 50, was sentenced to death in 2014 for the 2010 murder of his landlord, Nova Southeastern University Professor Joseph Morrissey. The victim had begun the process of evicting Tundidor’s family from a Plantation townhouse. Tundidor recruited his son and namesake to kidnap Morrissey and his wife, forcing them to withdraw money from an ATM while the elder Tundidor stayed at the Morrissey’s home alone with the couple’s young son.

Tundidor then stabbed Morrissey to death and set Morrissey’s home on fire. The victim’s wife and son escaped. Tundidor’s son testified against him and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

The jury that recommended death for Tundidor was unanimous, but defense lawyer Richard Rosenbaum has said he still intends to challenge the sentence because Tundidor would have put up more of a legal fight if he had known he only had to convince one juror to vote against death. Tundidor’s sentence is still in its earliest phase of appeals. James Herard

Broward County’s most recent addition to death row, Herard was part of a group of men tried and convicted of multiple violent robberies at Dunkin Donuts franchises in South Florida in 2008, including one that resulted in the death of customer Kiem Huynh, 58, in Tamarac. But Herard, now 27, was sentenced to death for a murder that was otherwise unrelated in which he wasn’t the gunman.

Prosecutors explained that Herard goaded another man, Tharod Bell, to shoot and kill Eric Jean-Pierre, 39, a restaurant worker coming home to Lauderhill after a day’s work. Pierre was chosen at random as part of a “body count” competition. Bell pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 50 years in prison. But the murder would not have taken place if not for Herard’s insistence, prosecutors said. Jurors agreed by an 8-4 vote, and Broward Circuit Judge Paul Backman imposed the sentence in January 2015.

His sentence is still in its earliest phase of appeals.