Death Row inmates pin hopes on recent rulings
By Jackie Hallifax
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Defense lawyers attacked Florida's capital punishment
law Friday on behalf of a man scheduled to be executed
Monday for a 1979 murder and accused killers in all
pending capital trials.

After getting those appeals, the Florida Supreme Court
gave the state's lawyers until Sunday to respond and
said defense attorneys then had until Monday morning
to counter the state's arguments.

The key legal debate is over who decides the facts
used to warrant death sentences.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled two weeks ago that the
death penalty statutes in Arizona and four other
states violated the Sixth Amendment guarantee to a
trial by jury because judges decided those facts in
capital cases.

The decision came in an appeal by Arizona Death Row
inmate Timothy Ring.

In Florida and three other states, juries play a role
in capital sentencing, but judges make the final call:
death or life in prison. The nation's high court
didn't say whether those laws were constitutional,
leaving the battle to be fought in state court.

The Florida Public Defenders Association sent Chief
Justice Harry Lee Anstead a letter Friday asking the
state's high court to delay Linroy Bottoson's
execution to allow enough time to settle questions
about the constitutionality of Florida's law.

Power of trial judges

A key question is whether trial judges still have the
power after the Ring ruling to impose death sentences
or "whether the only legally available sentence is
life imprisonment unless and until the Legislature
amends Florida's death penalty statute," Nancy
Daniels, president-elect of the public defenders
group, wrote Anstead.

Bottoson, 63, came within three hours of being
executed in February before the U.S. Supreme Court
granted him a stay of execution.

But the nation's high court lifted that stay last
week, and state officials this week scheduled his
execution for 6 p.m. Monday.

Bottoson is condemned for the 1979 murder of Catherine
Alexander, the 74-year-old postmistress of the
Eatonville post office, north of Orlando. He stabbed
her 14 times and ran over her with his car.

The other appeal filed Friday was for William Coday,
who has been convicted of the fatal bludgeoning of his
girlfriend Gloria Garcia and is awaiting sentencing in
Fort Lauderdale. Circuit Judge Alfred Horowitz refused
Tuesday to strike down the Florida law and scheduled a
hearing for Monday.

In Friday's appeal, Bottoson's lawyers argued that
Florida's law violates the guarantee to a trial by
jury guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.

Coday's attorneys want his case put on hold until the
issue is settled.

"The Supreme Court's decision in Ring necessarily
calls into question the constitutionality of Florida's
death penalty statute and affects not only cases
already pending on direct appeal, but all capital
cases pending at various ... trial courts throughout
the state," Coday's lawyers wrote.

Bottoson's lawyers also argue that he deserves a jury
hearing on his claim of mental retardation in the wake
of another recent decision from the U.S. Supreme
Court. In that ruling, the nation's high court said
the execution of mentally retarded defendants was
unconstitutional.