TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The death penalty for Paul Durousseau, 46, has been thrown out by the Florida Supreme Court.
Durousseau was a taxi driver convicted in the 1999 murder of Tyresa Mack. He was sentenced to death in 2007.
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He was charged with murder in the deaths of five young women killed in Jacksonville between December 2002 and February 2003, but was only prosecuted in the Mack case. Two of the women were pregnant.
German authorities suspect Durousseau may have killed several local women when he was stationed there with the Army during the early 1990s. Georgia law enforcement suspected Durousseau killed a woman near Fort Benning in 1997 before he was dishonorably discharged.
Tuesday's decision cited a January 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a case known as Hurst v. Florida, saying, “Durousseau’s death sentence was imposed under an unconstitutional capital sentencing statute.”
The trial jury split on the death sentence was 10-2. The state Supreme Court threw out the death sentence since the jury was not unanimous.