Attorneys are asking a federal judge to block next month’s scheduled execution of convicted child killer Bryan Frederick Jennings, arguing Florida’s death-warrant process is “wholly perfunctory and has rendered the right of (legal) representation meaningless.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Oct. 10 signed a death warrant to execute Jennings by lethal injection on Nov. 13, setting in motion a round of legal filings.
A Brevard County circuit judge on Oct. 10 appointed attorneys to represent Jennings, who had not had legal representation since the death of his lawyer, Martin McClain, in 2022.
A lawsuit filed Wednesday by Linda McDermott, an attorney with the federal public defender’s office in the Northern District of Florida, argued that the state’s process that allowed Jennings to be selected for a death warrant after he “languished on Death Row for more than three years without a lawyer” is deeply flawed.
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The process “violates Florida’s own statutes and rules governing the death penalty, as well as Mr. Jennings’ federal constitutional right to due process and equal protection,” McDermott wrote in the lawsuit.
Attorney General James Uthmeier sent a letter to DeSantis on Oct. 10 outlining Jennings’ crimes, which occurred in 1979, and the associated legal proceedings. Based on a review, “the record is legally sufficient to support the issuance of a death warrant,” Uthmeier wrote.
The lawsuit names as defendants DeSantis, Uthmeier, Florida Supreme Court Justice Carlos Muñiz and 18th Judicial Circuit Chief Judge Melanie Chase, whose circuit includes Brevard County.
“Mr. Jennings has been without state court counsel since 2022, in violation of Florida law. Defendants seek to capitalize on Mr. Jennings’ deprivation. If this court does not stop what the Florida courts have set in motion, it sets a dangerous precedent for any unrepresented, warrant-eligible individual to be executed without even a veneer of due process,” McDermott wrote.
Jennings was convicted of kidnapping 6-year-old Rebecca Kunash from her bedroom in May 1979 and raping and murdering her in Brevard County.
Former Gov. Bob Martinez signed a death warrant for Jennings and scheduled him to be executed in 1989. The Florida Supreme Court blocked that execution from taking place.
After DeSantis signed the new death warrant and attorneys from the office of the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel for the Middle Region of Florida were appointed to represent Jennings, the Florida Supreme Court ordered an expedited schedule for Jennings’ appeals and set a Nov. 3 deadline for briefs to be completed. Jennings’ new attorneys asked the court for a 30-day delay in the filing deadlines, arguing they had been inundated with documents as they tried to become acquainted with his case. Justices on Friday rejected the request.
The federal lawsuit alleged that Jennings’ “constitutional rights to due process and equal protection while under an active death warrant have been entirely disregarded” by the state.
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“Contrary to Florida law, Defendants Uthmeier, Chase, and Muñiz’s actions have created a system where litigation under a death warrant in Florida is wholly perfunctory and has rendered the right of representation meaningless,” McDermott wrote.
Responding to a request to expedite the federal lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker gave the defendants until Monday to respond and set a Wednesday deadline for Jennings’ lawyers to file a reply.
The lawsuit also linked the decision to sign a death warrant for Jennings to an unrelated “media firestorm” over Ronald Exantus, who relocated to Florida in early October after his release from a Kentucky prison where he served time for a home invasion and killing a 6-year-old child. Exantus’ release on parole drew outrage from DeSantis and Uthmeier, and the former Kentucky inmate was arrested in Marion County for failing to register as a convicted felon.
The lawsuit pointed to comments made by DeSantis and other people in his administration condemning Exantus and his release. It cited a social media post made by the governor the day before he signed Jennings’ warrant.
DeSantis’ post called Exantus a “scum bag” who murdered “a six year old kid,” saying “Don’t mess with the Free State of Florida.”
In a Fox News appearance on Oct. 10, the day DeSantis signed Jennings’ warrant, Uthmeier suggested that someone like Exantus should “perhaps get the death penalty” for murdering a child who was sleeping in their bed.
Jennings could become the 16th Florida inmate executed this year. The state has executed 14, a modern-era record for the most executions in a year, exceeding eight in 1984 and 2014. The era represents the time since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
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Norman Grim, who was convicted of murdering a Santa Rosa County woman in 1998, is scheduled Tuesday to become the 15th inmate executed. Grim also did not have an attorney at the time his death warrant was signed but, in an unusual move, is not fighting in court to stop his execution.
Grim’s lack of an attorney should have prompted the state to ensure that other Death Row inmates had access to legal counsel, McDermott, whose office is representing Jennings in what are known as federal habeas appeals, said in Wednesday’s lawsuit.
“Rather than pause and determine whom of the individuals on Death Row had no counsel, and thereby ensuring quality representation for all capital postconviction defendants, defendants DeSantis and Uthmeier perpetuated an unlevel playing field created by signing a warrant against an individual without postconviction counsel,” she added.
In what could be the state’s 17th execution this year, the governor last week signed a death warrant for Richard Barry Randolph, who was convicted of raping and murdering a Putnam County convenience-store manager in 1988. Randolph is scheduled to be executed Nov. 20.
