Hilton's appeal process begins
In what could be the start of a decade-plus legal slog, the first appeal by convicted serial killer Gary Michael Hilton of his 2011 death sentence for the murder of Cheryl Dunlap will be heard this morning by the Florida Supreme Court.
Oral arguments in Hilton’s automatic direct appeal to the state’s high court are expected to begin at about 10:30 a.m.
Public Defender Nancy Daniels, whose office is representing the 65-year-old Hilton, said the average time for such a capital appeal case to wend its way through the legal system can be about 10 to 12 years.
“Some people think that’s too long, but this is the ultimate penalty, so you want to make sure due process is exhausted,” she said.
A Leon County jury unanimously recommended the death penalty for Hilton’s brutal kidnapping and killing of Dunlap, a Crawfordville nurse he abducted from Leon Sinks Geological Area Dec. 1, 2007. He kept her captive in the nearby woods for up to two days, evidence showed, finally strangling, shooting or bludgeoning her to death. In an effort to conceal his crimes, Hilton sawed off her head and hands, burned them in his campsite fire pit and dumped her dismembered body in the woods, where it was found two weeks later by a hunter.
Weeks after killing Dunlap, Hilton went on to kidnap and kill Meredith Emerson, a 24-year-old college graduate, while hiking on Blood Mountain, Ga. Hilton was arrested and confessed to beating Emerson to death and decapitating her in exchange for a life prison sentence.
In March, Hilton pled guilty in U.S. District Court in Asheville, N.C., for the murders of John and Irene Bryant, an elderly hiker couple he killed about two months prior to Dunlap. He is currently being held pending sentencing in the federal case in Asheville’s Buncombe County Jail.
In his appeal in the Dunlap case, Hilton’s attorneys cited six reasons why his conviction and death sentence should be overturned, including the contention that inadmissible information about his other crimes was wrongly presented as evidence at trial.
State Attorney Willie Meggs, however, said he knew of no errors in the trial or with the sentence and that the state and federal appeal process for Hilton could be concluded more swiftly than is common for some other death penalty cases.
Meggs added that he has talked to federal officials and is confident Hilton will be returned to Florida once he is sentenced in the Bryant case.
“We are going to get him back,” Meggs said. “He is going to be on Florida Death Row.”
http://www.tallahassee.com/article/2...process-begins
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