Summary of Offense:
On January 26, 1991, Robin Lee Archer, through the acts of his cousin and three accomplices, murdered the victim, Billy Coker. The victim was shot to death. Archer was fired from his job at an auto parts store in March 1990. The following January, he convinced his 17-year-old cousin, James Patrick Bonifay, to kill the clerk he blamed for his having been fired. Bonifay testified that Archer told him to rob the store to conceal the motive for the killing and also told him the location of the store’s cash box and emergency exit. Bonifay asked a friend to borrow a gun. Bonifay was not home when his friend brought the gun, so he gave it to Archer who, in turn, gave it to Bonifay. Bonifay talked two friends into helping him, and the trio went to the parts store on the night of January 25, 1990. Bonifay, however, could not go through with the plan, and they left. The following morning Archer chastised Bonifay for not killing the clerk and the three went back to the store that night. Bonifay and Clifford Barth each shot the clerk from outside the store. They then crawled into the store through the parts window. After opening the cash boxes, Bonifay shot the clerk twice in the head execution-style as he lay on the floor begging for his life. Archer later refused to pay Bonifay because he had killed the wrong clerk. Bonifay confessed to several people, one of who informed the authorities. Archer, Bonifay and Bonifay’s two friends were arrested. The defendants were tried separately. Archer’s jury convicted him of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to death.
James Patrick Bonifay, in a separate trial, also was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1991. His appeals history resembles Archer’s. The Florida Supreme Court in 1993 affirmed his conviction, but remanded the sentence. A new jury resentenced Bonifay to death in 1994. The Supreme Court affirmed the sentence in 1996. Bonifay's sentence was eventually commuted to life imprisonment because he was 17 years old at the time of the murder.
Clifford Barth in 1991 received a life sentence for his role in the murder.
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