The Florida Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to halt next week’s scheduled lethal injection of Michael Bell for two 1993 Jacksonville murders as the state moves toward a modern-era record for executions in a year.
Justices unanimously rejected Bell’s arguments that the execution should be halted because of newly discovered evidence related to witness testimony. If Bell, 54, is executed, he will be the eighth inmate put to death this year, matching a record set in 1984 and 2014.
Gov. Ron DeSantis on June 13 signed a death warrant for Bell, who was sentenced to death in the December 1993 shooting deaths of Jimmie West and Tamecka Smith outside a Jacksonville bar. Bell used an AK-47 rifle to shoot the pair as they got into a car.
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Court documents said Bell was seeking revenge for the death of his brother, who had been killed by West’s half-brother, Theodore Wright, earlier in 1993. Bell did not know that Wright had sold the car to West before the shooting, according to the documents.
In asking the Supreme Court to halt the execution, an attorney for Bell raised a series of issues, including that witnesses had recently recanted testimony that helped convict Bell. For example, a brief filed at the Supreme Court said witnesses Henry Edwards and Charles Jones recanted testimony that allegedly was given to receive favorable treatment from police on other matters.
But during an evidentiary hearing last month in Duval County circuit court, Edwards and Jones “invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to answer questions about their recantations as well as questions about other topics like police and prosecutorial misconduct in the case,” the brief said.
The brief argued that the men were worried that testimony at the evidentiary hearing could lead to being prosecuted for perjury and that “case law is legion that the state may not use threats of perjury or intimidating tactics which substantially interfere with a witness’ decision to testify for a defendant.”
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But Circuit Judge Jeb Branham rejected the arguments, and the state Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld his ruling. Part of the court’s 53-page main opinion pointed to “overwhelming evidence of Bell’s guilt.”
“The overwhelming evidence presented at Bell’s trial established that for some time before the murders, Bell told multiple people that he wanted revenge on Theodore Wright for killing Bell’s brother months earlier,” the main opinion said. “Bell, under the guise of needing a gun for protection, asked his then-girlfriend, Ericka Williams, to buy an AK-47. The day before the murders, Bell accompanied Williams to buy an AK-47, magazine devices and bullets. Bell took the gun and other items after he and Williams left the gun store.”
The opinion added, “On the night of the murders, Bell’s close friend, Dale George, rode with Bell to the liquor lounge in Bell’s car. Bell retrieved the AK-47 from the back seat of his car, placed a mask over his head and walked to the car that West, Smith, and another woman were entering. Bell fired multiple shots, hitting West and Smith, and then ran back to his car where George had moved into the driver’s seat. Bell continued to fire the AK-47 at the lounge while trying to escape.”
Chief Justice Carlos Muniz and Justices Charles Canady, John Couriel, Jamie Grosshans, Renatha Francis and Meredith Sasso shared Tuesday’s main opinion. Justice Jorge Labarga wrote a concurring opinion.
Final appeals typically go the U.S. Supreme Court in such cases.
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Tuesday’s decision came hours after several religious leaders from across the state marched to the state Capitol to call on DeSantis to pause executions. The Rev. Dustin Feddon, a priest at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Tallahassee, pointed to concerns about a “dramatic increase” in death warrants and executions in the state.
“We do not believe that killing people, ultimately, is the answer to these grave crimes,” Feddon said.
The eight executions in 1984 and 2014 were the most since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 after a U.S. Supreme Court decision had halted capital punishment.
DeSantis last week signed a ninth death warrant. Edward Zakrzewski, 60, who was convicted of using a crowbar and a machete to murder his wife and two children in 1994 in Okaloosa County, is slated to be executed July 31.
News Service Assignment Manager Tom Urban contributed to this report.
