A inmate has asked the Florida Supreme Court to halt his scheduled execution after a circuit Judge refused to grant a new trial or resentencing hearing because of issues related to witnesses recanting testimony.
A death warrant signed for Michael Bell, 54, orders him to face a lethal injection at Florida State Prison on July 15.
Duval County Circuit Judge Jeb Branham issued his ruling Tuesday after a hearing in which two witnesses were expected to say their decades-old trial testimony was based on lies cooked up by police. Instead, they changed course and refused to recant.
Branham said their refusal amounted to a “fatal” turnabout in Bell’s defense, but his order didn’t mention that the witnesses were also told they could be charged with perjury had they recanted – a dilemma Bell’s defense lawyers said amounted to a threat.
The latest appeal focuses on Branham not freeing the witnesses from the possibility of perjury charges and permitting them to plead the Fifth Amendment when the "newly discovered evidence" could have brought a different verdict, according to a court affidavit filed by Bell's attorney.
Had that evidence been heard by the original trial jury, Bell could not have been found guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt, much less imposed the death penalty," the document said.
The men, Henry Edwards and Charles Jones, told investigators for Bell’s legal team last week that their testimony in Bell’s 1995 trial was false: They were coerced and threatened by Jacksonville sheriff's detective William Bolena or Duval prosecutor George Bateh to make the statements, according to sworn affidavits each of them signed.
They were expected to testify to that on Monday but abruptly reversed course after Branham refused to grant them immunity and instead appointed them attorneys to advise them on the consequences of committing perjury.
Branham also allowed the witnesses to refuse to answer a broad spectrum of questions by invoking their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination – an expansive use Bell’s attorney said offered them “blanket” protection against answering questions even unrelated to their original trial testimony.
The judge's order omitted any mention of the lingering threat of perjury or their use of the Fifth Amendment during the hearing.
Edwards, with his court-appointed attorney standing feet away, took back his June 16 statement to Bell’s defense, saying instead that he thought the investigators who asked him questions about the case were authors putting together a movie script. In most of the questioning, Edwards invoked his Fifth Amendment right to self-incrimination.
Colin Kelly, who interviewed Edwards and Jones, testified that he and his partner identified themselves as investigators for Bell’s appellate team and explained that both men willingly participated in interviews and signed off on their individual affidavits after reading through them paragraph by paragraph.
When Kelly told Jones that a death warrant had been signed in Bell’s case, he said Jones sank down and spoke freely, expressing that he “needed to get this off his chest and that it was his time to come forward and tell the truth.”
According to Kelly’s testimony, Jones admitted he was coached to lie.
Branham’s order declared that Edwards – who testified that he didn’t know how many felony convictions he had because there were so many – was more credible than Kelly.
Jones, with an appointed attorney nearby, answered only two questions from Bell's appellate attorney, Bob Norgard: that his sister was in a relationship with Bolena around the time of the murder and that he signed the affidavit submitted last week. He invoked his Fifth Amendment rights to every other question, including those alleging police abuse in Jones’ earlier affidavit.
Because he didn’t recant his trial testimony and didn’t answer questions, Branham said he had “nothing to evaluate the credibility of,” according to the order. In the case of Jones, the judge didn’t mention Kelly’s testimony recounting Jones’ decision to sign the sworn affidavit.
Branham’s order discounted eight other witnesses Bell’s defense put on the stand at Monday’s hearing.
The court also found that the possible recantations by Edwards and Jones were not timely – a procedural finding that means Bell’s lawyers could have and should have made these arguments years ago.
Norgard told Branham that he did not know either witness had made such a claim until attorneys for another Jacksonville death row inmate investigating the veracity of witness testimony and police conduct in that case, called him after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Bell’s death warrant last week.
Bell was convicted of killing a Jacksonville couple as revenge for the murder of his brother. It was a case of mistaken identity: The victims, Jimmy West and Tamecka Smith, were not responsible for his brother’s death. Bell also later pleaded guilty to three other murders: a woman and her toddler son in 1989 and the killing of his mother’s boyfriend about four months after the West-Smith murders.
Bell’s attorney in the 1995 trial, Richard Nichols, did not present a defense during the trial. During the penalty phase, Nichols presented only Bell’s mother as a witness and did not ask her about her son.
Nichols, who died in 2023, also didn’t mention Bell’s time at Dozier School for Boys, where Bell said he had been sexually assaulted by a guard and was forced into a fight club in which guards placed bets on which children would win. That decision has been scrutinized in subsequent years.
At least 29 former Dozier students have been sent to death row, according to Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty, a blog run by local attorney Melanie Kalmanson, who has done extensive pro bono litigation in death penalty cases.
The jury unanimously recommended a death sentence for each conviction. Judge R. Hudson Olliff sentenced him to death on June 2, 1995.
If put to death, Bell will be the eighth person executed by the state this year.
