Saying the issue is “of national and constitutional significance,” attorneys for Samuel Smithers on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block his scheduled execution next week because Smithers is 72 years old.
The attorneys filed a petition and a request for a stay of execution, a day after the Florida Supreme Court rejected arguments that executing the senior citizen would violate the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
The petition said executing Smithers “runs contrary to our maturing society’s values and principles” and would not serve the purposes of capital punishment. It also said he would be the first inmate over age 70 executed in Florida since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, after a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling halted it.
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“The execution of Mr. Smithers serves neither penological purpose of deterrence nor retribution,” the petition said. “Thus, the imposition of Smithers capital punishment amounts to nothing more than mindless vengeance, offending the dignity of society.”
Smithers’ attorneys said the issue is most similar to legal prohibitions on executing people who are insane or mentally incompetent. Smithers has been on Death Row since 1999 for the 1996 murders of two women in Hillsborough County.
“The prohibition against the execution of people who are insane at the time of execution, does not consider culpability at the time of the offense,” the petition said. “The prohibition only focuses on the person’s state at the time of the execution. This should be applied analogously to those that have reached the age for consideration as being elderly. The execution of the elderly should similarly be void of consideration of culpability at the time of the offense, with the focus of the analysis on the person’s age at the time of the execution.”
But in rejecting the arguments Tuesday, the Florida Supreme Court drew a distinction between executing Smithers and prohibitions on putting to death people who are incompetent or who have intellectual disabilities.
“Smithers argues that this (Florida Supreme) Court should break new ground in concluding that his execution, at 72 years of age, would constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment and Florida’s corresponding constitutional provision. … No opinion of the United States Supreme Court or this (Florida Supreme) Court has held that the elderly are categorically exempt from execution,” Tuesday’s opinion said.
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Sept. 12 signed a death warrant for Smithers, who is scheduled to be executed Tuesday. He would be the 14th inmate executed this year in Florida — a modern-era record.
Smithers was convicted of murdering Denise Roach and Christie Cowan at a secluded Plant City property, where he worked as a caretaker, and dumping their bodies in a pond.
A 1999 sentencing order posted on the Florida Supreme Court website with the Smithers death warrant said he picked up Roach and Cowan at an east Tampa motel at different times to have “sex for money.” He drove them to the property, where they were bludgeoned to death.
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The previous modern-era record for executions in a year in Florida was eight in 1984 and 2014. The modern era represents the time since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
DeSantis also has signed a death warrant to execute Norman Grim on Oct. 28 in the 1998 murder of a woman in Santa Rosa County.
The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops on Wednesday released a letter it sent to DeSantis last week asking him to halt Smithers’ execution. The letter said Smithers’ crimes were “heinous” and that he should be punished severely but that every “human life, given by God, is sacred.”
“The death penalty is unnecessary,” Michael Sheedy, the conference’s executive director, wrote. “There is a way to punish without ending another human life: life-long incarceration without the possibility of parole. It is a severe yet more humane punishment that ensures societal safety, offers finality to court processes much more quickly than a death sentence, and allows the guilty the possibility of repentance.”
Editor’s note: Court documents have spelled Cowan’s first name as Christie, Christy and Cristy. Smithers’ attorneys have said the correct spelling is Christie.
