Convicted killer Thomas Gudinas is “severely mentally ill” and putting him to death by lethal injection would violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, his attorneys argued this week as they try to convince the Florida Supreme Court to halt his scheduled June 24 execution.
In briefs filed Sunday and Wednesday, Gudinas’ attorneys argued that executing him “would serve no purpose beyond base vengeance.”
“Evolving standards of decency have rendered the execution of Gudinas constitutionally impermissible,” the lawyers wrote. “Deterrence and retribution are not served with Gudinas’ execution. People suffering from the level of mental illness Gudinas did at the time of offense are incapable of being deterred by the death penalty. It is hardly a fair retribution if Gudinas had little capacity at the time of offense to act rationally and avoid the conduct.”
But the state Attorney General’s Office said in a brief Tuesday that the Supreme Court should reject the arguments and that Gudinas’ “mental health has been at issue and litigated since his trial.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis on May 23 signed a death warrant for Gudinas, who was convicted in the May 1994 murder of Michelle McGrath, who had been out for a night of entertainment in downtown Orlando. McGrath was last seen alive about 2:45 a.m. in the courtyard of a nightclub and was believed to have been attacked as she went to her car in a parking lot, according to a 1995 sentencing order in the case.
McGrath’s body was found about 7:30 a.m. in an alley and had been “savagely raped and severely beaten by the defendant with a blunt instrument,” then-Circuit Judge Belvin Perry Jr. wrote in the sentencing order.
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Gudinas, 50, would be the seventh inmate executed this year in Florida. Anthony Wainwright was executed Tuesday evening in the 1994 murder of a woman who was kidnapped from the parking lot of a Lake City supermarket and killed in a rural area.
Gudinas’ attorneys appealed to the Florida Supreme Court last week after Orange County Circuit Judge John Jordan refused to halt his execution.
In part, they have pointed to a May 29 evaluation of Gudinas by a neuropsychologist and mental, physical and sexual abuse that Gudinas suffered as a child. They are seeking an evidentiary hearing on his mental-health issues.
Also, in making arguments about evolving standards of decency, they have cited U.S. Supreme Court precedents — in cases known as Atkins v. Virginia and Roper v. Simmons — that prevent executing people with intellectual disabilities and people who are minors.
But the brief filed Tuesday by the Attorney General’s Office said the Supreme Court should turn down such arguments.
“Merely because Gudinas found a new doctor to give a more favorable opinion on the eve of his execution does not establish that there is a reasonable probability for a lesser sentence, especially where the sentencing calculus rests on the meritless claim that Atkins/Roper should be expanded,” the state’s lawyers wrote. “The lower court properly denied an evidentiary hearing and relief.”
