TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Supreme Court has rejected the resentencing plea of James Duckett, the rookie Mascotte cop who was sentenced to death in the 1987 rape and murder of 11-year-old Teresa Mae McAbee.
Duckett was seeking relief based on recent U.S. and Florida Supreme Court rulings that say that juries — not judges — should impose death sentences, and that they must be unanimous decisions.
The jury recommended death at his 1988 trial in an 8-4 vote. But Florida Supreme rulings say death case resentencing appeals only apply to cases where the conviction and appeals are completed after June 24, 2002.
That’s when the U.S. Supreme Court made its landmark decision about juries making death decisions in an Arizona case.
“After reviewing Duckett’s response to the order to show cause, as well as the state’s arguments in reply, we conclude that Duckett is not entitled to relief,” the justices wrote in their opinion Friday.
The state high court last year rejected Duckett’s appeal attacking the credibility of an FBI hair analyst who testified that a pubic hair found in Teresa’s underpants was consistent with Duckett’s. Her body was discovered in a lake by a fisherman.
A Department of Justice study was critical of some of the hair expert’s work in other cases, saying he overstated the significance of some findings.
″... the hair evidence was by no means the only evidence supporting the conviction in this case,” justices noted in the opinion.
“Significantly, the victim was last seen at the convenience store in Duckett’s patrol car, and the unusual tire tracks at the lake where the victim’s body was found matched those of Duckett’s patrol car. ... In addition, although Duckett had stated that the victim never sat on the hood of his car, both Duckett’s and Teresa’s fingerprints were discovered on the hood of Duckett’s patrol car.”
“In fact, Duckett’s prints were commingled with the victim’s, whose prints indicated that she had been sitting backwards on the hood and had scooted up the car.”
Source: dailycommercial.com, Frank Stanfield, January 1, 2019
⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us:
deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.
Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!
"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
