Raising questions about Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “unbridled discretion in determining who shall die and when,” an attorney for Thomas Gudinas has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the convicted killer’s scheduled execution Tuesday at Florida State Prison.
Attorney Ali Shakoor on Wednesday filed a petition and a request for a stay of execution, in part arguing that the state should turn over records that would explain DeSantis’ decision last month to sign a death warrant for Gudinas. The petition contended that the state needs to have criteria for determining which inmates are put to death.
“Florida’s governor has no criteria, procedure, or guidelines in place for selecting who lives and who dies,” the petition said. “Granting the governor unfettered discretion has, in practice, led to a completely arbitrary process for determining who lives and who dies. There are no articulated limits to the executive discretion, there are no guidelines for the selection process, and the entire process is cloaked in secrecy.”
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The petition said “increased reliability” is required in determining the constitutionality of carrying out death sentences. It also said the “requested records are imperative to investigating the very concerning facts surrounding the signing of Gudinas’s death warrant.”
But the state Attorney General’s Office on Thursday filed a response, urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reject the arguments. It cited a Florida Supreme Court opinion Tuesday that said Gudinas was not entitled to the records.
“Gudinas wants this (U.S. Supreme) Court to order the Florida courts to release the requested records so he can then potentially challenge both the governor’s selection of him for a death warrant and the broader Florida clemency structure for lacking criteria or procedures to determine whom to execute as violations of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments (of the U.S. Constitution),” the state’s response said. “While he asserts that such claims would be meritorious, the Florida Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the clemency process and the governor’s absolute discretion to issue death warrants are constitutional, thus any challenge to the denial of records or allegation of constitutional error does not establish a colorable claim.”
DeSantis on May 23 signed a death warrant for Gudinas, 51, in the May 1994 murder of Michelle McGrath in downtown Orlando.
McGrath was attacked after she left a nightclub, and her body was found the next morning in an alley. She had been sexually battered, and Tuesday’s Florida Supreme Court opinion said a medical examiner determined the “cause of death was a brain hemorrhage resulting from blunt force injuries to her head, probably inflicted by a stomping type blow from a boot.”
After DeSantis signed the death warrant, Gudinas’ attorneys began an effort to prevent the execution. The Florida Supreme Court upheld a decision by Orange County Circuit Judge John Jordan, who on June 5 rejected a series of arguments, including that Gudinas should be spared because he is “severely mentally ill.”
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If Gudinas is executed, he would be the seventh inmate put to death by lethal injection this year in Florida. DeSantis last week signed a death warrant for Michael Bernard Bell, 54, who was convicted of murdering two people in 1993 in Duval County. Bell’s execution is scheduled July 15.
If Gudinas and Bell are executed, it would match the most executions in a year since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 after a U.S. Supreme Court decision had halted executions. Florida executed eight inmates in 1984 and 2014, a Florida Department of Corrections list shows.
