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Thread: Rodney Tyrone Lowe - Florida Death Row

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    Rodney Tyrone Lowe - Florida Death Row




    Facts of the Crime:

    The victim, Donna Burnell, worked as a clerk at the Nu Pak convenience store in Indian River County. On the morning of July 3, 1990, a man entered the store and shot her three times with a .32 caliber handgun. Ms. Burnell was shot in the face, head, and chest, which she died from on the way to the hospital. The man left the scene without taking any money from the store. The police were able to link Rodney Lowe to the incident due to the facts that his fingerprints were found at the scene and his vehicle was seen leaving the parking lot of the convenience store. They brought him in for questioning the following week. After having a brief conversation with his girlfriend, Lowe gave a statement that implicated him in the murder. He was arrested after giving this statement.

    Lowe was first sentenced to death in Indian River County on May 1, 1991 and eventually re-sentenced to death on January 25, 2012.

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    November 9, 2008

    Florida Supreme Court Orders New Sentencing Hearing for Rodney Lowe in 1990 Murder

    Longtime death row inmate Rodney Lowe, formerly of Sebastian, will get a new hearing on his death sentence dating back to a 1991 trial in Indian River County.

    But the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the 38-year-old's conviction for the first degree murder during an attempted robbery of a convenience store in July 1990. Donna Burnell, 30, of Palm Bay, was shot twice while she and her 3-year-old son were in the Nu Pack Market on County Road 512, Sebastian, court records show.

    The Supreme Court took an unusually long time — a year — to rule on the appeal, said Rachel Day, an attorney with the Capital Collateral Regional Council-South that handled Lowe's appeal. The Supreme Court only overturned the death sentence when it ordered the new hearing.

    "The Supreme Court was troubled" by what Day said was the discovery of evidence after trial that Lowe may not have acted alone.

    "He had a minor role," she said. "He was not the shooter. What was presented to the jury (in the original conviction) was misleading."

    No one else was charged in the case.

    In 1991, a jury found Lowe, then 21, guilty of 1st degree murder and attempted armed robbery in the case. Burnell was shot in the head and chest and died on the way to a hospital following the 10 a.m. robbery of the store at 695 C.R. 512, according to police reports.

    Attorneys for Lowe appealed. In 2005, Circuit Judge Robert Hawley upheld the conviction, but agreed there should be a new hearing on his death sentence.

    Again Lowe appealed. This week, the Supreme Court agreed with Hawley's ruling.

    Lowe will return to Indian River Circuit Court for a new sentencing hearing. A date hasn't been set. The State Attorney's office will have to decide whether to continue seeking death or a lesser sentence, court officials said.

    The state could not be reached for comment Friday.

    At the time of Lowe's murder arrest, he was on community control after serving a year in the Indian River Correctional Institution for a robbery with a firearm in Brevard County in 1988, court files show.

    (Source: The Vero Beach Press-Journal)

  3. #3
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JLR's Avatar
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    Got any news on this one Heidi??

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    Still pending. He has been removed from death row and is in Indian River County custody.

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    New jury to decide if murderer stays on death row 21 years after clerk killed in botched Sebastian robbery

    Linda Burnell still cries when she recalls being age 11 and fearful about her mother staying behind in Palm Bay when the family left for a New England summer vacation in 1990.

    It was the last time she and her sister Paula Burnell, then 10, would speak to their mother, Donna M. Burnell, 30, who was gunned down July 3, 1990 during a botched robbery at the Nu-Pack Market in Sebastian, where she worked as a clerk.

    “We had a bad feeling something was up. My sister and I freaked out, we didn’t want to leave our mother,” Burnell said by phone from Middleboro, Mass., where she lives with her 15-year-old daughter.

    “My last words were not great to my mother when she called to see if we had arrived,” she added. “I hung up abruptly with her.”

    She remembers feeling devastated when told later her mother had been brutally murdered.

    “She was the parent I was close to,” Burnell said. “She was the hugger and the teacher and that got taken away from us.”

    Soon, the Burnell sisters will return from their Massachusetts homes to a Vero Beach courtroom to face Rodney Tyrone Lowe, 40, a former Wabasso man who was convicted and sentenced to death in 1991 for the first-degree murder of Donna Burnell. A jury also found him guilty of attempted armed robbery, for which he received a 15-year prison term.

    Linda Burnell on Monday said their father, Richard Burnell, 54, just started a new job and was not expected to join them.

    A process to select a new jury begins Sept. 12, to determine if Lowe should be returned to death row or be sentenced to life behind bars.

    Trials in capital cases in which the death penalty is sought are divided into guilt and penalty phases. In Lowe’s case, jurors voted 9-to-3 in recommending he be sentenced to death.

    After years of pursuing appeals, the Florida Supreme Court in 2008 affirmed a court order issued in 2005 voiding Lowe’s death sentence. That 2005 order cited evidence presented since Lowe’s conviction that indicated he may not have acted alone. The high court refused to grant Lowe a new trial, but ruled that a new jury should determine whether he returns to death row or be sentenced to life in prison with the eligibility of release after 25 years — the same penalty options available to jurors in 1991.

    Records show Lowe was on house arrest for a 1987 robbery in Brevard County when he used a .32-caliber handgun to shoot Donna Burnell in the face, head and chest. She died en route to a hospital.

    Lowe fled the store without taking any money from a cash drawer that investigators found closed but damaged by gunshots.

    The execution-style murder was witnessed by Donna Burnell’s 3-year-old nephew — her brother’s son, whom she was raising along with her two girls. Due to the child’s age and certain learning disabilities, a judge ruled the boy was not competent to testify to what he saw that day.

    The Burnell siblings didn’t attend Lowe’s 1991 trial, presided over by Indian River County Judge Joe Wild.

    “My father felt the children didn’t need to go through that,” Linda Burnell noted.

    Assistant State Attorney Ryan Butler, who is retrying Lowe’s penalty phase with Assistant State Attorney Nikki Robinson, said if the state did not seek the death penalty again, Lowe would automatically receive a life sentence, meaning he could be eligible for release by 2015.

    “At the time he was sentenced, the choice was either death or life without the eligibility for release for 25 years,” Butler said. “And there are first-degree murderers who are released after 25 years . . . so that’s certainly a consideration.”

    It will be up to a judge to order Lowe’s ultimate punishment, but if a new jury rejects the death penalty and recommends life, the court must carefully consider their vote.

    Burnell won’t speak Lowe’s name, she said, and she feels being forced to relive her mother’s death is “rehashing old wounds.”

    “For my father, I’m sure it’s a lot worse than what we’re going through,” said Burnell. “I was only 11 at the time.”

    Still, Burnell — who described her mother as always “happy and bubbly,” said she needs to come and be her voice during Lowe’s resentencing.

    “I’m scared to face this guy,” she said. “I don’t know if I can deal with him sitting there looking like ‘I want to be free,’ when my mom will never walk this Earth or see her grandchild because of him.”

    Lowe at his 1991 trial claimed one of two accomplices killed Donna Burnell and that he only drove the getaway car. He initially told police that accomplices Dwayne Blackmon and Lorenzo Sailor were with him at the store, and that Sailor was the shooter.

    Blackmon, who died in 2003 at age 32, testified for prosecutors during Lowe’s trial and said Lowe confessed to shooting Burnell and then gave him the gun afterward.

    Former state prosecutors Lynn Park, now retired, and Richard Barlow, a criminal defense lawyer, contended Lowe planned the robbery and that his gun was the murder weapon. His fingerprints were on the wrapper of a hamburger found warm in a microwave oven inside the store. His car was seen speeding away after the shooting. His time card showed that he was clocked-out from his lumber yard job at the time of the murder, and jurors heard a statement Lowe gave to police linking himself to the killing.

    That hamburger, stored in an evidence vault for 21 years, is expected to be introduced again as evidence.

    Butler meanwhile, said facts proving Lowe was responsible for Burnell’s murder haven’t changed, and for his crimes he should be put to death.

    “He executed a woman in front of her 3-year-old nephew; that fact remains the same,” Butler noted. “There is no doubt that there were three people who conspired to commit a robbery, but the day of the murder, Lowe acted alone.”

    Lowe throughout his appeals has argued his trial attorney mishandled his case and that new evidence shows he was not the shooter. His attorneys in 2003 and 2004 presented testimony from six friends, ex-girlfriends or acquaintances of Dwayne Blackmon’s who said he confessed to Burnell’s murder. Some of those witnesses could be called to testify again, including Blackmon’s cousin Benjamin Carter, and Carter’s former girlfriend Lisa Miller, who claim they heard Blackmon confess that he was involved in the store robbery and shot Burnell.

    When Circuit Judge Robert Hawley in 2005 threw out Lowe’s death sentence, he ruled that new evidence presented since Lowe’s conviction indicated he may not have acted alone during the attempted robbery and murder and that that could have influenced the outcome of the penalty phase of his trial.

    Butler, though, noted Lowe in 1990 told investigators Lorenzo Sailor shot Burnell.

    “He squarely blamed it on Sailor; he has Blackmon there (at the store,) but he didn’t think Blackmon entered the store,” Butler said. “Actually, he said he picked up Sailor in front of the store and Sailor tells them ‘I shot the clerk.’”

    Sailor is serving a ten-year prison term for a drug conviction and is scheduled to be released in 2015, according to the state Department of Corrections’ website.

    Butler meanwhile, flatly rejected Lowe’s story to police.

    “The evidence we present will still show that he acted alone,” Butler said.

    Lowe’s court-appointed attorney, Thomas Garland of Port St. Lucie, said his client has maintained all along that he wasn’t the shooter and “wants off death row.”

    “He’s been on there for 20 years and he is hoping at this point, since the (first-degree murder) conviction has been upheld, that he is allowed to go back into general populations so he can have some liberties,” Garland said. “But that’s a recommendation to be made by the jury and a final decision to be made by (Indian River Circuit) Judge (Robert) Pegg.”

    During Lowe’s 1991 penalty phase, defense attorneys argued that while serving time in prison for an offense committed before Burnell’s murder, Lowe was well behaved, earned his diploma and was well liked by co-workers at Gator Lumber, where he worked following his release from prison. Wild ruled that information didn’t outweigh the aggravating facts that Lowe had a prior felony conviction involving violence and that the murder was committed while Lowe was engaged in an armed robbery attempt.

    Linda Burnell, meanwhile, turned to Facebook in December and created a fan page to honor her mother — a Catholic native of Boston with Irish/German roots who’d moved to Palm Bay from Massachusetts two years before her death. By January, the fan page had 62 friends.

    “I wanted people to tell me good things about my mother — good things that she did and made her important to them,” Burnell said. “They did and we’ve had a few laughs.”

    During Lowe’s penalty phase, expected to last two weeks, she said she hopes her family attains some relief from a hurt so deep that time hasn’t fixed.

    “I was told as a child I was the woman of the family now and I had to step up, not cry and stay strong,” Burnell recalled. “So I abided by that and held it all in.”

    Her father distanced himself, she said, and her sister Paula used the tragedy “as a crutch.”

    “She’s basically mourned for 20 years,” Burnell said.

    http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2011/sep/...th-row-21-yea/

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    Opening statements presented in killer's resentencing trial in Vero Beach

    Convicted murderer Rodney Lowe gunned down a Sebastian convenience store clerk 21 years ago because he didn't want to leave behind any witnesses to finger him later in court, an Indian River County jury was told Monday.

    "On July 3, 1990, this defendant Rodney Tyrone Lowe, walked into a convenience store in Sebastian with this gun and imposed a death sentence on Donna Burnell," Assistant State Attorney Ryan Butler declared, as he pointed a .32-caliber handgun to the ground as if standing over someone.

    "He shot her twice in the head and once through the heart," Butler added. "The primary reason he murdered Burnell was because he knew her. And he didn't want to go back to prison."

    That's because at the time of Burnell's killing at the Nu-Pack Market on County Road 512, Lowe was on supervised release from a four-year prison term he'd completed related to a robbery conviction in Brevard County, Butler told jurors during his opening statement Monday.

    "The defendant clearly knew he was going back to prison," Butler said. "He could not afford to get caught and he couldn't afford to leave a witness he knew and who could perhaps identify him and so he murdered Donna Burnell."

    The killing was witnessed by Burnell's 3-year-old nephew — her brother's son — whom she was raising along with two daughters, then ages 10 and 11.

    In 1991, Lowe, 40, was convicted and sentenced to death for the first-degree murder.

    After pursuing appeals for years, a judge in 2005 voided Lowe's death sentence and the order was upheld by the Florida Supreme Court in 2008. That 2005 order cited evidence presented since Lowe's conviction that indicated he might not have acted alone.

    The high court refused to grant Lowe a new trial, but ruled that a new jury should determine only whether Lowe should be returned to death row or be sentenced to life behind bars without the possibility of release for 25 years.

    Defense attorney Jeffrey Smith suggested to jurors that Lowe wasn't Burnell's shooter and hadn't acted alone that day.

    Smith acknowledged that on July 3, 1990, Lowe "made a terrible, terrible decision to participate in a crime that ended in the loss of Donna Burnell's life."

    He said he knew there was nothing Lowe or his lawyers could say that would "ease the pain" of the Burnell family's loss.

    "We're not here ... to try to excuse or justify or in some way make it right for Mr. Lowe to have been involved in a crime on July 3, 1990," he said. "What you are being asked to do is to make a decision as to what the appropriate penalty should be. Not if he gets punished, but what his punishment should be: life in prison or death by lethal injection."

    Donna Burnell's daughters, Paula and Linda Burnell of Massachusetts, listened and sobbed quietly in court as their mother's violent death was described in detail by crime scene investigators and police detectives.

    The sisters took turns leaving the courtroom as prosecutors presented evidence bags containing the clothes Burnell was wearing at the time she was killed.

    Retired Sebastian Police Capt. Eugene Ewert recalled being the first officer to arrive at the store and seeing Burnell on the floor behind the store's counter. He knew her from being a frequent visitor to the store.

    "I checked her pulse and I asked her if she knew me and she nodded her head in the positive and then I cleared her airway and she was having trouble breathing. ... I tried to tell her not to talk," Ewert testified. "She kept saying no, no, no, no."

    Testimony is expected to continue after a lunch break.

    http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2011/sep/...lers-trial-in/

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    Indian River jury recommends Rodney Lowe be sentenced to death

    It took an Indian River County jury about two hours Friday to return a unanimous vote recommending that convicted killer Rodney Lowe be sentenced to death for the 1990 murder of store clerk Donna Burnell.

    Lowe, 41, remained still and offered no reaction when it was announced all 12 jurors recommended he be returned to death row for the July 3, 1990 first-degree murder of Burnell at the Nu-Pack Market on County Road 512 in Sebastian.

    "It has been an extraordinary difficult time for Dona Burnell's family; they went through this 21 years ago and they've had to relive this now," Assistant State Attorney Ryan Butler said after court, who prosecuted Lowe's case with Assistant State Attorney Nikki Robinson.

    "It's very difficult to retry a case after 21 years," he added. "This was a heinous crime and he didn't show Donna Burnell any mercy, and we feel like the jury made the right decision."

    Lowe spent 14 years on Florida's death row after being convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1991.

    The state Supreme Court in 2008 ordered he be resentenced after upholding a court order issued in 2005 that ruled a new jury should decide whether Lowe should serve life in prison, without the possibility of release for 25 years, or receive a lethal injection.

    The high court ruled that evidence presented since Lowe's 1991 conviction indicated he might not have acted alone.

    This week, jurors heard three different claims of who killed Burnell, but prosecutors insisted Lowe acted alone and rejected defense testimony that the shooter could have been one of two accomplices Lowe claimed were with him that day.

    When the verdict was announced, Lowe's family, his mother Sherrion Lowe and a brother and sister, left court immediately and made no comments.

    Lowe's attorneys Thomas Garland and Jeffrey Smith appeared disappointed the jury declined to recommend a life prison term.

    Making the case more difficult, Garland said, were Florida's 1990 sentencing laws that permitted a prisoner serving a life term to be eligible for release after 25 years.

    "It's pretty plain to see from jury selection that the jurors were calculating how long he had been in prison," Garland said. "They knew he'd been there since 1990 and that he could be eligible for parole. We weren't allowed to argue that the possibility for release was slim and none. But we did the best we could."

    Donna Burnell's daughters Linda and Paula Burnell hugged family members and appeared relieved.

    Outside court, Linda Burnell said the jury gave her mother justice.

    She said her mother didn't believe in the death penalty, but was "happy that everyone saw that her life wasn't nothing."

    "Sometimes it was hard, I didn't know any of the evidence, really, from the (1990) trial," she said. "But now I have the knowledge that I never had."

    She said she'll return to Massachusetts "with a little bit of closure," something that's eluded her for two decades.

    http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2011/sep/...ey-lowe-be-to/

  8. #8
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JLR's Avatar
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    I can't say im too suprised to be honest. It appears all they offered in mitigation was some flimsy evidence that he wasn't the shooter. Add in the lack of a lwop sentence and this was a likely outcome. I'm interested to see how it holds up throughout the appeal process considering the age of the case and the recent dissent in the Lancelot Armstrong case which also had the problem of a lengthy time before retrial.

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    Convicted Indian River murderer could be sentenced by end of year

    VERO BEACH — Convicted murderer Rodney Lowe must wait until December or early next year before he will face a judge who is expected to follow a jury's recommendation and sentence him to death.

    In September, an Indian River County jury unanimously voted to recommend that Lowe, 41, again be sentenced to death for the July 3, 1990 murder of store clerk Donna Burnell at the Nu-Pack Market in Sebastian. He spent 14 years on Florida's death row after being convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1991.

    In 2008, the state Supreme Court ordered Lowe be resentenced after upholding a court order issued in 2005 that ruled a new jury should decide whether Lowe should serve life in prison, without the possibility of release for 25 years, or receive a lethal injection.

    During a hearing Friday, Lowe's attorneys told Circuit Judge Robert Pegg they didn't have additional mitigating evidence for him to consider other than what was presented during his resentencing trial.

    In Florida, a jury weighs both aggravating and mitigating factors and then makes a sentencing recommendation to the judge, who ultimately decides whether those factors were sufficiently proved.

    In Lowe's case, his attorneys Thomas Garland and Jeffrey Smith urged Pegg to consider a dozen mitigating factors on their client's behalf, including his strong family relationships, his religious faith and good behavior while incarcerated. The defense has suggested that Lowe's role in the crime was that of "lookout and driver" and his two accomplices killed Burnell.

    State prosecutors though, insisted that several aggravating factors supported sentencing Lowe to death, including that he acted alone in shooting Burnell and that the killing was committed to prevent her from being able to identify Lowe to authorities.

    Pegg ordered attorneys to submit final legal briefs by Dec. 9, at which time he'll schedule a hearing to impose Lowe's punishment.

    http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2011/oct/...uld-be-by-end/

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    Judge rules Rodney Lowe will go to death row a second time for Sebastian store clerk shooting

    A man who fatally shot Sebastian store clerk Donna Burnell 21 years ago will be going to Florida's Death Row — for a second time, a judge ruled on Thursday.

    The first time was in 1991 after an Indian River County jury convicted Rodney Lowe, then 21, of shooting Burnell at the Nu_Pack Market on County Road 512 in mid-1990. The motive, according to prosecutors, was to keep her from identifying him.

    She was shot three times with a .32-caliber handgun: twice in the head and once in the heart, according to court records. A witness found Burnell on the floor with her 3-year-old nephew kneeling beside her crying.

    And the assailant left without getting anything. A cash drawer was stuck.

    Burnell's daughters, Paula Burnell and Linda Burnell, and her sister, Christine Baker, spoke in court before Circuit Judge Robert Pegg handed down the death penalty.

    "Goodbye forever, Rodney Tyrone Lowe," Linda Burnell said at the end of her statement, which she read from sheets of paper held in trembling hands. "You ask for a chance at life, but you never gave my mother a chance."

    In 2008 the Florida Supreme Court ordered that local courts reconsider the sentence because new evidence suggested that a second person, or even a third, may have been involved in the shooting.

    Because of that, the Supreme Court ruled that a new set of jurors consider whether Lowe, now 41, should be sentenced to life in prison, rather than face his own death by a governor's order.

    The high court didn't overturn his original conviction. That stood.

    At issue was the sentence he received and whether the possible new evidence might show that Lowe wasn't all at fault. Lowe's defense attorneys, Thomas Garland and Jeffrey Smith, suggested that Lowe was a lookout and driver in the crime that allegedly was committed by two accomplices.

    In September an Indian River Circuit Court jury listened to testimony from Florida prison inmate Lisa Miller who said that two weeks after the murder she heard Lowe's friend, Dwayne Blackmon, admit to being the triggerman. Blackmon didn't testify. He died in 2003 at age 32.

    Jurors did hear Blackmon's recorded testimony from the 1991 trial. In that trial, Blackmon said Lowe confessed to being Burnell's killer.

    But according to Lowe's interviews with law enforcement in 1990, Lowe accused Blackmon's cousin Lorenzo Sailor of firing the fatal shots.

    A man who walked into the store just after the shooting testified that he saw one man quickly leaving the store. In the parking lot was a white Mercury Topaz that prosecutors said was the same model and color as the car Lowe's girlfriend drove.

    The witness, former Sebastian resident Steven Luedtke, said he tried to comfort Burnell and he called 911. At the time Burnell was shot, she had two daughters, ages 10 and 11, and was raising the nephew who was in the store with her.

    The jury deliberated for two hours and unanimously recommended that Lowe again be sentenced to death. In Florida, judges make the final decision in sentencing. Pegg agreed with the jury.

    "You have not only forfeited your right to live among us, you have forfeited your right to live at all," Pegg told Lowe Thursday.

    During a pre-sentencing hearing last year, Lowe's attorneys told the court Lowe has strong family relationships, is religious and has been on good behavior while in jail. Lowe's family did not attend Thursday's sentencing.

    At the time of the shooting, Lowe was on supervised release from a four-year prison term for a robbery conviction in Brevard County.

    If Lowe had been sentenced to life in prison he could have been eligible for parole after 15 years. That is because his crime was committed when Florida's law allowed that.

    http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2012/jan/...o-death-row-a/

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