Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 12

Thread: Robert James Bailey - Florida

  1. #1
    Guest
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    5,534

    Robert James Bailey - Florida




    Summary of Offense:

    At 10:20 P.M. on March 27, 2005, Officer Kevin Kight, a sergeant with the Panama City Beach Police Department, stopped a white Dodge Durango that was blocking traffic on Front Beach Road. Robert Bailey was the driver of the vehicle and his friend D’Tori Crawford was sitting in the passenger seat.

    At 10:30 P.M., Kight radioed to the dispatcher that he had been shot. Officer Michael Rozier was conducting a traffic stop at a nearby location. Upon hearing that Kight had been shot, he drove to the Front Beach Road location. Kight was on the ground with two other officers attending to him. Rozier followed the vehicle tracks leaving the scene, and found a white Dodge Durango parked a few blocks away. Multiple police officers arrived at the scene shortly after Kight’s radio transmission. The officers immediately began to administer emergency medical aid. Eventually paramedics arrived and continued CPR. A pulse was never detected and Kight was pronounced dead at the hospital.

    Hillary Chaffer, a resident of Panama City Beach, was driving on Front Beach Road that evening. She noticed that a police officer had stopped a vehicle. As she drove her truck into a position parallel to the stopped white Dodge Durango, she saw the officer approaching the Durango with his right hand on his gun and his left hand reaching back toward his handcuffs. Chaffer then faced forward to drive, and heard two gunshots. She looked back and saw the driver of the Durango fire a third shot into the officer. Chaffer later identified Robert Bailey as the driver of the Durango. Corey Lawson was riding with friends in a pick-up truck driving along Front Beach Road at 10:30 P.M. on March 27, 2005. As the truck was stopped in traffic, a man ran up to the road from the beach and jumped into the bed of the truck. The man told Lawson he had just “popped a cop.” The man then showed Lawson the gun he had used. At the man’s request, Lawson and his friends dropped the man off at a liquor store. Lawson later identified Robert Bailey as the man. Bailey’s friend, D’Tori Crawford, testified for the State at trial. He stated that he, Bailey, and their friend John Braz drove from Wisconsin to Florida to spend a few days there for spring break.

    On March 27, 2005, after checking in at the Sugar Sands Motel, the three went to the Sweet Dreams bar. Bailey drove them in the Durango. After about an hour, Bailey and Crawford left the bar in the Durango. Crawford described Bailey as not sober but not drunk. As Bailey drove down the road in the heavy, slow-moving traffic, they stopped to talk to some girls who were standing beside the road. While they were talking, Bailey did not realize the traffic was proceeding and he was blocking the traffic behind them. An officer stopped them. While the officer was checking Bailey’s information, Bailey told Crawford he did not have a license and was wanted for a parole violation. He said if the officer tried to arrest him, he was going to “pop this cop.” Crawford then left the vehicle and ran away before the officer returned. At the scene of the shooting, officers collected the following pieces of evidence: two fired cartridge casings, a set of handcuffs, a citation for driving with a revoked license, and Robert Bailey’s identification card. Officers recovered a fired cartridge casing from the Durango. A bullet projectile was also recovered from a minivan that was driving by at the time of the shooting. Police officers arrested Bailey at the Sugar Sands Motel on the morning of March 28, 2005. Officers recovered a Taurus 9-mm semi-automatic pistol from Bailey’s waistband, as well as cartridges from his pocket.

    Joseph Hall, an FDLE firearms expert, compared the Taurus firearm to the casings and bullets recovered from the scene of the shooting. Hall concluded that the two fired cartridge casings found at the scene and the one found in the Durango were fired from Bailey’s Taurus firearm. Hall also found that the two bullets recovered from Kight’s body were fired from the Taurus firearm. The bullet recovered from the side of the minivan was too damaged for comparison. Dr. Charles Siebert performed an autopsy on Kight. Kight sustained two gunshot wounds to the upper chest. The bullets traveled through the weaker material of Kight’s protective vest. Siebert concluded the gunshot wounds caused Kight’s death and the manner of death was homicide.

    Bailey was sentenced to death on April 11, 2007 in Bay County.

    __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ _____


    On May 7, 2010, Bailey filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/flo...cv00108/58010/

  2. #2
    Guest
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    5,534
    May 23, 2010

    Cop killer blames jurors, attorneys, newspaper for guilty verdict

    PANAMA CITY — The Florida Supreme Court already has affirmed cop killer Robert Bailey’s trial and death sentence, but Bailey still is hoping for another shot at either a new trial or a lesser sentence.

    Bailey filed a motion for post-conviction relief earlier this week, saying he had ineffective counsel at trial and that jurors in his case were biased because of pretrial publicity. The motion, a common tactic in felony cases and routine in first-degree murder cases, will be heard by Circuit Judge Michael Overstreet.

    Bailey, 26, of Wisconsin, shot Panama City Beach Police Department Sgt. Kevin Kight during a traffic stop March 26, 2005, on Front Beach Road. He was convicted Feb. 15, 2007, of first-degree murder with a firearm and resisting arrest with violence. Jurors recommended 11-1 that he be put to death, and Overstreet imposed that sentence.

    Bailey’s trial attorneys, John Gontarek and Michael Flowers, were ineffective because they failed to strike biased jurors during the voir dire process, Bailey’s new attorney, Clyde Taylor of Tallahassee, wrote in the motion. During the selection process, one juror told the attorneys that she did not believe the death penalty was used enough.

    “If it was used more, there would be less crime,” she said, according to the motion. Other jurors were not questioned thoroughly enough, Taylor wrote.

    Bailey’s attorneys also failed to find out how much pretrial publicity the jury had seen. Taylor described this publicity, which was seen across the state, as “highly prejudicial.” He took issue with several newspaper headlines, including one from The News Herald which read: “Bailey playing crazy card: Taped phone conversation between accused cop killer, case witness reveals plan intended to avoid murder trial.”

    “The impact of these headlines and subsequent stories cannot be understated,” Taylor wrote in his motion, adding they inflame the reader with a sense of anger and disgust at Bailey, evaporate the presumption of innocence and detail evidence that was not introduced during the guilt phase of the trial.

    “This type of information would be difficult, if not impossible, to ignore when deciding the defendant’s fate,” Taylor wrote.

    Ultimately, Bailey’s own attorneys had no theory of defense during the trial, a situation that was evident in opening statements and closing arguments, Taylor wrote. In his opening, Flowers told jurors that they needed to wait until all the evidence was in but did not say how the evidence would show anything favorable to Bailey, Taylor wrote. In the closing, Flowers did much the same thing except to say that the defense was proud of the law enforcement officers in the case.

    “Talk about emphasizing the state’s case and demeaning a defendant. … This takes the cake,” Taylor wrote. In the final part of his closing, Flowers suggested the slaying was not premeditated but did not tell jurors what other kind of murder it might have been.

    “There is no explanation for this performance that can pass muster,” Taylor wrote. Taylor is asking for an evidentiary hearing to make his arguments directly to Overstreet. A date for that hearing has not yet been set.

    http://www.newsherald.com/news/kille...newspaper.html

  3. #3
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Judge rules against 2 murderers

    PANAMA CITY — Circuit court judges this week ruled against two convicted murderers who claimed mistakes by their lawyers prevented them from getting fair trials.

    Death row inmate Robert Bailey was convicted of shooting and killing Panama City Beach Sgt. Kevin Kight during a traffic stop on Front Beach Road during Spring Break 2005. Judge Michael Overstreet sentenced Bailey to death following his 2007 trial and the Florida Supreme Court upheld the verdict and sentence in 2008.

    Last year Bailey filed a motion for postconviction relief on the grounds his trial lawyer, John Gontarek, was ineffective. Overstreet ruled against almost all of Bailey’s claims in a two-page order filed Thursday, but the judge gave Bailey and his attorney, Clyde Taylor, 30 days to amend the motion as it pertains to two claims.

    Citing “an abundance of caution,” Overstreet allowed Bailey to amend his claims that Gontarek failed to keep certain jurors off the jury during jury selection and that Gontarek should have called more than one expert witness and introduced additional evidence.

    During a hearing last month, Overstreet scheduled a hearing on Bailey’s motion for July.

    Clint Stagg is serving a life sentence for beating 43-year-old Tonya Farmer, of Springfield, to death with a hammer in 2006 and burying her body in a shallow grave. During a hearing in January, Stagg argued his trial attorney, Todd Doss, failed to object to the stun-belt Stagg was required to wear during his trial.

    The stun-belt is a device used to subdue inmates with a 55,000 volt charge. It is worn around a defendant’s leg and can be triggered by bailiffs if they deem the defendant poses a security risk.

    Stagg told Judge Brantley Clark during a hearing on the issue that he was so afraid he would shocked by the stun-belt that he was unable to move around the courtroom out of fear the jury would notice the device on his leg. Because he didn’t wish to leave his seat at trial, Stagg testified, he did not testify in his own defense and didn’t sit in on sidebar discussions with the judge; therefore, his ability to fully participate in his defense was impeded, he argued.

    Clark’s ruling, which was filed Thursday, denied Bailey’s request, saying Bailey failed to establish he had been prejudiced by being required to wear the device.

    “The defendant’s general allegations that he could not meaningfully participate in his defense are unbelievable, conclusory and do not establish a reasonable probability that the outcome of the trial would have been different,” Clark wrote in his denial.

    http://www.newsherald.com/news/city-...murderers.html

  4. #4
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Related:

    Fallen officer remembered at Thunder Beach

    The Thunder Beach Spring Rally has been going full throttle since Thursday. And this weekend it just keeps on truck’ in.

    The Sgt. Kevin Kight Memorial Thunder Beach Bike Parade kicked off the festivities Saturday as the motorcade went on a tour of the area.

    Kight, a sergeant with the Panama City Beach Police Department, was fatally shot in March of 2005, during a traffic stop on Front Beach Road. Kight’s killer, Robert Bailey, was convicted in February, 2007, of first-degree murder and is currently on death row.

    The Thunder Beach Bike Parade is held in Kight’s honor every year.

    Bikers lined up at about 10 a.m. and made their annual drive past the Kevin Kight Memorial on Front Beach Road to honor the fallen officer.

    And what a parade it was.

    From the classic Harley Davidson, to the crotch rockets and three wheelers, hundreds of motorcycles could be seen touring the city and beach areas.

    The bikers seemed to be everywhere and they seem to have come from everywhere.

    From as far north as Wisconsin, east to North Carolina and as far west as Louisiana, the motorcyclists have come to cruise the county.

    Paul Szymborski, who drove down from Wisconsin, enjoyed a beverage near a biker gathering just across the street of the Holiday Inn Resort.

    “We left Milwaukee the day before yesterday and drove about eleven hundred miles,” Szymborski said. “It was cold in the beginning but it turned out all right. It was windy most of the way but there wasn’t any rain. And when you’re on a long distance trip like that you don’t want rain.”

    Eugene and Bonnie Pruitt rode down from North Carolina. They were enjoying the sunshine at the beach after a long ride.

    “It was very long. Thirteen hours,” said Bonnie.

    Bonnie said she loved the Panama City Beach area.

    “We love it here,” Bonnie said. “We’re from the mountains and it’s cold. We are going home on Tuesday. But this is really nice, really nice!”

    Whitey Grant of Youngstown brought up the rear of the motorcade Sunday morning but he possibly had the most important accessory any party needs: a beer wagon. It was hooked to the back of his motorcycle.

    “At Daytona one year I got 12 cases in there,” Grant said.

    The beer wagon resembled a small chuck wagon.

    “I’ve had it for seven or eight years now,” Grant said. “And every year I try to do a little more to it.”

    The Blessing of the Bikes will take place at 10:30 a.m. Sunday at the Shoppes of Edgewater in Panama City Beach.

    Along Back Beach Road, law enforcement officers are stationed at major intersections, keeping a close eye on the traffic. Motorists are urged to keep aware of the large number of motorcycles on the road this weekend.

    http://www.waltonsun.com/news/beach-...-thunder-.html

  5. #5
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Cop killer wants new trial

    PANAMA CITY — The man on death row for the 2005 slaying of Panama City Beach Police Officer Kevin Kight returns to Bay County Wednesday to ask for his death sentence to be reversed and that he be given a new trial.

    Robert Bailey, of Wisconsin, was convicted in 2007 of murder in the first-degree with a firearm for shooting Kight during a traffic stop on Front Beach Road during Spring Break in 2005. The jury voted 11-1 in favor of capital punishment for Bailey after a trial in which Bailey conceded that he shot Kight but argued he didn’t mean to kill him so it wasn’t premeditated.

    Premeditation is considered an aggravating factor by judges and jurors during the penalty phase of capital cases (and other cases). Aggravating factors are weighed against mitigating factors when deciding how to sentence someone.

    In his motion for post-conviction relief, Clyde Taylor, Bailey’s attorney, argued that Bailey’s trial attorney failed to effectively attack the prosecution’s aggravating factors and failed to vet certain jurors’ opinions on mitigating factors.

    During jury selection, one woman, who was eventually seated as a juror, said she felt the death penalty was an under-utilized deterrent to crime and someone who committed premeditated murder “should deserve to die.”

    “Her belief that the death penalty should be used more illustrates her desire to disregard the instructions from the judge and to recommend death with little hesitation,” Taylor wrote. “Her expression that the death penalty will deter future crime is also cause for alarm.”

    The same juror said she had learned through news reports that Bailey had pleaded guilty, which didn’t happen, and seemed to imply she would require some evidence of Bailey’s innocence before she would vote for acquittal. She later said she could set aside what she had learned in news reports, but “her comments demonstrate that the burden of proof was upon the defendant,” Taylor wrote.

    There were four jurors Taylor described in his motion as having “bias against the defendant.” Bailey’s attorney at trial, Jay John Gontarek, should have used his preemptory strikes to remove those four people from the jury, Taylor wrote.

    Motions for post-conviction relief are common in death-penalty cases and typically involve a claim of fundamental error, like ineffective assistance of counsel, during trial. Bailey has already had one appeal heard by the Florida Supreme Court, which upheld the verdict and sentence in 2008.

    http://www.newsherald.com/news/wants...op-killer.html

  6. #6
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Death row inmate argues for new trial

    PANAMA CITY — When Walter Smith met Robert Bailey after the former had been arrested for killing a Panama City Beach Police officer, Smith didn’t suspect Bailey was mentally retarded. But as his appointed defense attorney, Smith had his client tested anyway.

    Bailey was able to speak and write capably, but there were things in Bailey’s past that prompted Smith to have his IQ tested.

    “I knew that he ate paint chips, fell out of a window, drank gasoline,” Smith testified Wednesday. Smith was called as a witness in Bailey’s post conviction relief hearing. Bailey, who was convicted and sentenced to death in 2007 for the shooting of Sgt. Kevin Kight on Front Beach Road during Spring Break in 2005, is asking for a new trial because of mistakes he claims his attorney made during the trial. His trial attorney was John Jay Gontarek, who also testified Wednesday.

    Bailey is now being represented by Clyde Taylor, who alleges that Gontarek’s trial strategy was so deficient that Bailey should be given a new trial.

    Assistant State Attorney Larry Basford, who prosecuted Bailey, countered that different lawyers will employ different strategies; just because Gontarek didn’t follow the strategy Smith had laid out before quitting the case doesn’t mean his strategy was deficient.

    Smith laid out what his strategy was until he quit the case and Gontarek was appointed to represent Bailey. In death penalty cases, a lawyer should focus his efforts on influencing either the guilt phase or the penalty phase, Smith said.

    “My focus was strictly on the penalty phase,” he said. Smith, who has tried more cases in the 14th Judicial Circuit than any other attorney, said his opinion was that Bailey would be convicted of first-degree premeditated murder, and the jury would recommend death.

    “To me, it was one of the strongest cases of premeditation I’ve ever seen,” Smith said.

    But because Florida law prohibits executing the mentally retarded, Smith focused on presenting evidence that Bailey was retarded after the first IQ test put Bailey’s IQ in the high 60s. Evidence that Bailey was retarded was his only hope to avoid a death sentence, Smith said.

    “The more I looked, the more I became convinced he was mentally retarded,” Smith said. Bailey had “deficits in adaptive functioning,” Smith said, which is why he couldn’t hold jobs and never had a driver’s license or a checking account.

    Smith ordered more tests, but Bailey refused to complete another IQ test. Soon after that, Smith quit the case because Bailey was recorded telling a friend he was trying to get committed to a mental hospital with bizarre behavior, based on advice from Smith.

    Smith denied telling Bailey that and said he quit because he would appear to be fabricating evidence and his credibility was at stake.

    Gontarek also described his defense strategy Wednesday. He felt “the mental retardation issue would destroy our case,” so he argued that the killing was not premeditated. Bailey shot Kight in the chest rather than the head, so, “he didn’t really intend to kill him,” was the theory, Gontarek said. Gontarek wanted to convince jurors that Bailey was only guilty of second-degree murder or manslaughter, thus avoiding the penalty phase of the trial entirely.

    http://www.waltonsun.com/news/inmate...ew-panama.html

  7. #7
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    ROBERT JAMES BAILEY v STATE OF FLORIDA

    The man who murdered Panama City Beach police officer Kevin Kight will stay on death row.

    Thursday morning the Florida Supreme Court refused to vacate the first degree murder conviction and the death penalty imposed on Robert Bailey.

    Bailey, a Milwaukee area gang member, had come to Panama City Beach during spring break 2005, looking for girls. Kight made a traffic stop on Bailey's vehicle because it was holding up traffic on jam-packed Front Beach Road.

    Bailey vowed he would not go back to prison for parole violation, and shot Kight as the officer approached his vehicle with handcuffs in hand. The justices Thursday said no to Bailey's three claims that his trial attorney was ineffective.
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  8. #8
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    On December 4, 2014, Bailey filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/flo...4cv00333/78996

  9. #9
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2015
    Location
    New Jersey, unfortunately
    Posts
    4,382
    Death sentence vacated by the Florida Supreme Court today due to Hurst.

    http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/d...7/sc17-433.pdf
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  10. #10
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    20,875
    Hess: We will ‘absolutely’ seek death penalty for Kight’s killer

    By Katie Landeck
    The Panama City News-Herald

    PANAMA CITY BEACH — Citing the lone juror who voted against the death penalty for the man who killed Panama City Beach Police Sgt. Kevin Kight, the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday sent Robert Bailey’s case back to circuit court for a new sentencing.

    Glenn Hess, state attorney for the 14th Judicial Circuit, said he “absolutely” will seek the death penalty for Bailey through a second penalty phase rather than settle for a life sentence.

    Until Wednesday, Bailey, 34, had been sentenced to die for fatally shooting Kight twice during a routine traffic stop in 2005 over an expired license. According to the arrest affidavit, Bailey — a gang member with a history of both crime and mental illness — told a passenger in the car, “I’m not going back to prison, even if I have to pop this cop.”

    Of a 12-member jury, 11 believed the murder was justification for the death penalty.

    The one no vote had nothing to do with the facts of the case, juror Russell Gillingham recalled Thursday. The juror who voted no, he said, had a family member who had been convicted for murder “but he never believed his relative did it, so he didn’t want to go through with the death penalty.”

    It was that one “no” vote that led the Supreme Court to vacate the decision Thursday, the latest in a string of Florida death penalty cases to have its sentence tossed after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that the state’s process for imposing the death penalty was unconstitutional.

    “In this case, due to the jury’s nonunanimous vote of 11-1 to recommend a sentence of death, this court cannot conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury unanimously found that the aggravating factors were sufficient to impose a sentence of death or that the aggravation outweighed the mitigation,” the decision reads.

    The decision was a disappointment to Kight’s family.

    “We are deeply saddened by the ruling by the Florida Supreme Court to grant a new sentencing hearing for Kevin’s killer,” according to a statement sent by Ken McVay on behalf of Kight’s former wife, Christina Kight-McVay; son, Brandon; and the Kight family.

    “However, we are confident that the State Attorney’s Office and the judicial system will see that justice is served in this case. Please keep all of our family in your prayers in this difficult time.”

    As the court continues to overturn death penalty sentences — the court decision cited several other vacated decisions in 11-1 cases as precedent — many are protesting that a unanimous decision is too high of a threshold. Hess had advocated for a 10-2 decision to be the threshold when he submitted an amendment to the state last year, noting not even serial killer Ted Bundy was unanimously sentenced.

    http://www.newsherald.com/news/20170...-kights-killer
    "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

Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast

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
  •