Page 7 of 7 FirstFirst ... 567
Results 61 to 65 of 65

Thread: Florida State Attorney Aramis Ayala

  1. #61
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    20,875
    Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala announces she will not seek re-election

    By WESH News

    ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala announced in a video posted to Facebook Tuesday that she will not be seeking re-election.

    Ayala cited her personal views of Florida’s death penalty law in the announcement.

    “It became abundantly clear to me that death penalty law in the state of Florida is in direct conflict with my view and vision for the administration of justice,” Ayala said.

    Ayala announced in March 2017 that her office would no longer seek the death penalty in any case, a decision that made national headlines.

    Gov. Rick Scott reassigned her death penalty-eligible cases to State Attorney Brad King. The governor's move was upheld by the state supreme court.

    The court said Ayala was wrong to have a blanket policy of not seeking the death penalty.

    Following the court’s decision Ayala announced that she would begin seeking the death penalty in future cases if it was unanimously recommended by a panel of her assistant prosecutors.

    The most high-profile case transferred to King was the prosecution of Markeith Loyd.

    Ayala said she's proud to have helped "raise the standard of prosecutorial responsibility."

    She defeated incumbent state attorney Jeff Ashton in 2016.

    https://www.wesh.com/article/aramis-...ction/27609112
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  2. #62
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    20,875
    Hallelujah! So now the useless woman finally admits that she never supported the DP. It would have been nice if she made this clear when she ran for election
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  3. #63
    Moderator Dave from Florida's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2012
    Location
    Florida
    Posts
    810
    I had a nightmare recently that a Democrat won the White House and nominated Ayala to the Supreme Court.

  4. #64
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2015
    Location
    Pennsylvania
    Posts
    4,795
    Just 1 new death sentence since cases taken from Ayala, as impact of unanimous jury rule felt

    By Beth Kassab
    Orlando Sentinel

    After Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala declared in early 2017 that she would no longer seek the death penalty, then-Gov. Rick Scott handed 30 of her cases over to a different state prosecutor willing to seek the ultimate punishment.

    Under Brad King, the Ocala-based state attorney Scott tapped to take Ayala’s death penalty caseload, Florida would be back to business as usual as one of the most aggressive enforcers of the death penalty in the country. The Sunshine State stood second only to California in the number of people condemned to death — 59 — in the five years before Ayala took her anti-capital punishment stand.

    But King has won just a single death sentence in Orange and Osceola counties in the 2 ˝ years since he took over Ayala’s capital prosecutions.

    The reason likely has little to do with who is trying the cases.

    The biggest change to Florida’s death penalty in decades — a new requirement that juries must be unanimous in recommending a person convicted of first-degree murder be put to death — took effect at about the same time Scott, now a U.S. senator, assigned King to step in to Ayala’s circuit.

    And convincing 12 jurors to vote for death is more difficult than winning a 7-5 split, which was all that was required before the unanimity rule.

    “It is certainly harder to ensure that 12 jurors will all be of a mind to be willing to return a recommendation of death, especially when they are told that even if the aggravators outweigh the mitigators they still don’t have to ever vote for death,” King said in an e-mail.

    And Central Florida isn’t alone.

    There hasn’t been a single new death sentence handed down in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Miami-Dade or Palm Beach counties in the two years since a pair of decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court and Florida Supreme Court prompted Florida lawmakers to create the unanimous-vote requirement.

    Broward and Duval counties are the only major metropolitan areas where juries have recommended death during that time, according to statistics from the Death Penalty Information Center.

    Stephen Harper, a former public defender who teaches a course on the death penalty at Florida International University and consults on capital cases across the country, said defense attorneys are putting more focus on picking jurors now, because all it takes to save a client’s life is finding one willing to grant mercy.

    “There are a number of cases where prosecutors sought the death penalty, but one or two or many more jurors said no,” Harper said. “The more sophisticated the jury selection is, the more success they’re going to have in getting a life sentence.”

    King’s one death penalty success in Ayala’s former cases came when a jury recommended in 2017 that Juan Rosario die for the killing of an 83-year-old woman during a robbery. But his sentence was never imposed and a judge granted a new sentencing hearing in the case, which is still under appeal.

    King has taken four others to trial and, each time, the jury recommended life in prison without parole. The trial of Everett Miller, charged in the shooting deaths of two Kissimmee police officers, is underway now. And six other cases in which King is pursuing the death penalty haven’t gone to trial yet.

    In the trial of Scott Nelson, convicted earlier this year of kidnapping caregiver Jennifer Fulford from her employer’s Winter Park home and stabbing her to death, just one juror voted against capital punishment. That case was tried by a prosecutor under Ayala, who eventually reversed her decision and set up a death penalty review panel for her office.

    And in August, a Seminole County jury sentenced Grant Amato, convicted of killing his brother and parents in Chuluota, to life in prison rather than death.

    Defense attorneys have raised concerns about jurors who want the death penalty potentially bullying a single or a few holdouts.

    Defense attorneys have raised concerns about jurors who want the death penalty potentially bullying a single or a few holdouts.
    “Can other jurors pressure or browbeat that person?" asked Marc Burnham, a defense attorney who handles some high-profile cases, such as that of Rosario and Bessman Okafor, convicted in 2015 of killing 19-year-old Alex Zaldivar. “How do you empower that person to do what they believe?”

    Because Okafor was sentenced to death by an 11-1 jury, he will get a new penalty phase and a chance to leave death row. King is pursuing eight other similar cases in which the defendant is entitled to a new sentencing because the juries that sentenced them to die weren’t unanimous.

    He allowed four people on death row to be granted life sentences, either because of the inmate was so old that a new death sentence was unlikely before they died of natural causes or, in one case, because the jury was split 7-5 and a unanimous death sentence seemed unlikely, King said.

    Statewide, the number of new death sentences in 2016 and 2017, as the new law was taking hold, dipped to three each, the lowest in years. In 2012, for example, Florida had led the nation by sending 22 new people to death row that year.

    In 2018, Florida’s total began to increase again to seven people sentenced to death.

    “Can other jurors pressure or browbeat that person?" asked Marc Burnham, a defense attorney who handles some high-profile cases, such as that of Rosario and Bessman Okafor, convicted in 2015 of killing 19-year-old Alex Zaldivar. “How do you empower that person to do what they believe?”

    And this year, according to Harper of FIU, the total so far is four.

    But he said there is also another force at work.

    Florida, which trails only Texas in the number of people executed in the past decade, also leads the country in the number of people — 29 — exonerated from death row.

    https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news...i4u-story.html
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  5. #65
    Senior Member Member Slayer's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2011
    Posts
    200
    Is this bad news?

Page 7 of 7 FirstFirst ... 567

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •