With his execution scheduled for Oct. 5, attorneys for Death Row inmate Cary Michael Lambrix filed a brief Monday in the Florida Supreme Court arguing that his death sentence should be tossed out.
Gov. Rick Scott on Sept. 1 scheduled the execution of Lambrix, who was convicted of killing Aleisha Bryant and Clarence Moore in 1983 after escaping from a work-release program.
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Lambrix met Bryant and Moore at a LaBelle bar and invited the pair to his mobile home for a spaghetti dinner. They were killed outside the home.
In the brief Monday, Lambrix's attorneys contend that he should be resentenced because a jury did not unanimously recommend that he should receive the death penalty.
Jury unanimity has become a major issue since a January 2016 U.S. Supreme Court decision that found Florida's death-penalty sentencing system unconstitutional because it gave too much authority to judges, instead of juries.
A subsequent Florida Supreme Court ruling said juries must unanimously agree on critical findings before judges can impose death sentences and must unanimously recommend the death penalty.
But the Florida Supreme Court made the unanimity standard apply only to cases dating back to 2002.
In the brief, Lambrix's attorneys argued it also should apply to older death-penalty cases.
“While Mr. Lambrix's death sentences were lawful at the time they were imposed, they would not be authorized under the controlling law today because the jury did not return unanimous death recommendations,” the brief said. “Under (part of state law), when the state no longer has the power to impose a sentence, it no longer has the power to carry out that sentence, even if it was lawful when it was imposed.”