SCOTUS Gives Green Light for Florida Execution

The U.S. Supreme Court today denied a stay of execution to Florida murderer Daniel Dillbeck and declined to take up his case. No dissent is noted. (See update at end of post.)

The Florida Attorney General’s statement of the question presented follows the break:

Dillbeck killed Deputy Hall with his own gun in 1979 while fleeing from an attempted murder investigation in Indiana. He negotiated a guilty plea to Deputy Hall’s murder and received a life sentence. Eleven years later, he escaped from custody, bought a knife, and carjacked Faye Vann because she looked like an easy victim he could use to get to Orlando. When she fought back, he stabbed her over twenty times, severed her windpipe, and caused her to drown in her own blood. Dillbeck received a death sentence that [was] finalized in 1995 when this Court denied certiorari.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently signed a death warrant for Dillbeck and his execution is scheduled for February 23, 2023. Dillbeck asked Florida’s courts to stay his execution and vacate his sentence. The Florida Supreme Court rejected relief and refused to stay his execution on both procedural state-law, and substantive grounds. This Court should decline to exercise certiorari jurisdiction over the following questions presented:

I. Do the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit states from barring dilatorily pursued exemption-from-execution claims based on evolutions in the medical community’s views?

II. Does the Eighth Amendment require unanimous jury sentencing when the Eighth Amendment claim is procedurally barred under state law, the Sixth (not Eighth) Amendment governs the right to a jury trial, and any Eighth Amendment holding would not retroactively affect Dillbeck?

Dillbeck’s escape and second murder occurred 11 years after his first murder, which occurred while he was on the lam for another attempted murder. If he had been sentenced to death for the first murder and executed within a reasonable time, Ms. Vann would not have been killed. Failure to use and enforce the death penalty kills innocent people.

Update (2/24): Dan Sullivan reports for the Tampa Bay Times: “Florida executed Donald David Dillbeck on Thursday evening, three decades after he stabbed to death Faye Vann outside the Tallahassee Mall.”

The story quotes the usual carping from the anti side:

On Wednesday, the group Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty delivered a letter to DeSantis’ office…. “Executing Donald won’t make our state any safer,” the letter stated.

That boilerplate claim is particularly revealing in this case, where it is beyond question that the state would have been safer for Faye Vann if Dillbeck has been sentenced to death and timely executed for his first murder.