Meant to protect victims
Lawyers argue Marsy’s Law may lead to innocent person’s execution, create chaos in court system
One day after Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin took his first free steps last November after spending more than a decade on death row, Florida voters passed Amendment 6 by a razor-thin margin.
But had the amendment, known as Marsy’s Law, been in place when Aguirre-Jarquin was convicted and sentenced to die in 2006, he might still be in prison. A provision of the law caps all death-penalty appeals at five years after the beginning of an appeal.
Advocates for the law — versions of which have been passed in at least 10 other states — say it was designed to protect people victimized by crime by placing their rights “on the same legal level as the rights of the accused.” But defense attorneys say Marsy’s Law could create chaos in the state’s court system.
One provision in the amendment says “all state-level appeals ... must be complete within two
years from the date of appeal in non-capital cases and five years in capital cases,” unless a judge requests an extension with a specific explanation for why the deadline could not be met. In Florida, capital cases are felonies in which life imprisonment or the death penalty is an option, including first-degree murder and certain sexual offenses.
Marie-Louise Samuels Parmer, a Tampa-based lawyer and attorney for the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, an agency that represents death-row defendants, described Marsy’s Law as a “well intentioned … but ill-conceived law that doesn’t take into account some of the very genuine problems in the criminal justice system.”
“There are so many problems with the criminal justice system in Florida,” Parmer said. “It’s underfunded and courts and prosecutors are overburdened. This law will just add to that burden — and at the same time deny people who are wrongfully convicted justice.”
Aguirre-Jarquin was convicted and sentenced to die in 2006 for the stabbing murders of his next-door neighbors, Cheryl Williams and her mother, Carol Bareis, two years prior. The Florida Supreme Court ordered a new trial in 2016, based in part on testimony that Williams’ daughter, Samantha, had repeatedly confessed to the killings. She has not been charged with a crime in her relatives’ deaths.
The Seminole-Brevard State Attorney’s Office dropped the case in the middle of jury selection for Aguirre-Jarquin’s retrial after testimony emerged casting doubt on Samantha Williams’ alibi the night of the killings.
Florida has seen more death-row exonerations than any other state in the country, with 29 people having been absolved after being sentenced to death in the state since 1973. Just last month, Clifford Williams Jr. was exonerated after being wrongfully convicted of murder in Jacksonville in 1976. He had spent 43 years incarcerated.
Of the 29 people absolved from the state’s death row, 15 were released from prison at least five years after their conviction — after their appeals may have been exhausted under Marsy’s Law, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit organization that analyzes capital punishment in the United States.
“This provision creates a substantial risk that an innocent person can be executed, or that an innocent person can spend the rest of their life in prison on a noncapital case,” Parmer said. “There are certainly more Clemente Aguirres out there — and it took more than 14 years for him to be released.”
Paul Hawkes, a former judge on Florida’s First District Court of Appeal and lobbyist for Marsy’s Law for Florida, a political organization that backed the amendment, said the provision limiting capital appeals is simply a “reporting mechanism” requiring judges to notify the Florida Legislature of any delays in an appeals process.
The provision, Hawkes said, “doesn’t require completion [of an appeal]. It requires reporting and it requires reporting with the thought that when there is reporting, people are more careful.”
Frank Bankowitz, an Orlando-based attorney who has defended more than 20 death-penalty cases, including Aguirre-Jarquin’s, also said he believed the law has the potential to “wreak havoc on the courts.”
“We don’t have enough judges to hear the cases or attorneys to handle them,” Bankowitz said.
Bankowitz said becoming an attorney qualified to defend death-penalty cases is an extensive process, and the issue is compounded by the fact that only one attorney is assigned to each death-penalty appeal. “You don’t have enough qualified appellate attorneys to handle them,” he said.
“I have no idea why they tacked that provision in there,” Bankowitz said. “I don’t think it affects one way or another the rights of crime victims — Florida’s already had victims’ rights.”
But Hawkes argued Marsy’s Law will benefit victims and death row inmates alike: victims, because “everybody likes finality ... victims especially;” and inmates, because death row “is a miserable place to live and they ought not to be there if they’re not going to be executed.”
“I don’t think it will overburden. I don’t think judges will neglect their duties. I don’t think as a consequence innocent people will be executed — but I do think it will show victims that we do care,” Hawkes said.
Aside from the capital-appeal cap provision, law enforcement agencies across the state have reported confusion on how to implement another provision of Marsy’s Law, which grants victims the right “to prevent the disclosure of information or records that could be used to locate or harass the victim or the victim’s family, or which could disclose confidential or privileged information of the victim.”
The Florida TimesUnion reported Monday that authorities in Jacksonville have stopped reporting the location of where some crimes were committed. The agency has also stopped identifying alleged victims, a practice the Times-Union said law-enforcement agencies in other states with Marsy’s Law have reported has hindered their ability to generate tips to solve crimes, because authorities are prevented from releasing information pertaining to the case.
Agencies in Central Florida are also redacting information that was previously publicly available.
“The Orange County Sheriff ’s Office recognizes a victim’s right to have identifying information withheld,” spokeswoman Michelle Guido said in an email Tuesday. “This applies retroactively. It can be requested by a victim in any crime or it can be offered by, for example, a deputy or detective.”
The Orlando Police Department said Tuesday the agency allows victims to request that identifiable information be made confidential, a policy that has been in effect since January. The agency does not track how many victims have requested confidentiality citing Marsy’s Law, spokesman Sgt. David Baker said.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Osceola County Sheriff ’s Office declined to identify victims in two shootings the agency publicized in press releases. “We are protecting the identity of our victims per Florida’s Amendment 6,” spokesman Kevin McGinley said in an email when asked why the agency was withholding the victims’ names.
Spokespeople for Seminole Sheriff Dennis Lemma and Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, both of whom are listed as endorsers of the amendment on the Marsy’s Law for Florida website, did not immediately return requests for comment last week regarding their support for the amendment.
“This provision creates a substantial risk that an innocent person can be executed, or that an innocent person can spend the rest of their life in prison on a noncapital case.”
Marie-Louise Samuels Parmer, Tampa-based lawyer and attorney for the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the length of Clifford Williams’ stay on death row. He spent 43 years incarcerated, but only four years on death row before his sentence was reduced.