Attorneys representing Darryl Barwick, a Death Row inmate, have filed a petition with the United States Supreme Court in a last-ditch effort to droop his scheduled execution on Wednesday for the 1986 homicide of a lady in Bay County, Florida.
In the paperwork filed on Friday, the lawyers asked a keep of execution and steered the justices to cope with considerations relating to Florida’s clemency job. These filings got here after a federal district pass judgement on and an appeals courtroom refused to keep the execution due to clemency-related problems.
On Friday, the Florida Supreme Court additionally disregarded different arguments geared toward delaying the execution.
Background:Darryl Barwick was once convicted of brutally stabbing a sunbather when he was once 19. He now faces justice 36 years later.
Execution:Governor DeSantis indicators warrant for Barwick’s execution for Panhandle homicide. This would be the 3rd individual the state has done in 3 months.
Barwick’s lawyers argued of their U.S. Supreme Court filings that his due-process rights have been violated due to a “standardless” clemency job. They claimed that the state had now not granted clemency to any individual sentenced to demise for 40 years.
“Due process requires that Mr. Barwick be given a hearing in which the criteria are transparent and encompass issues beyond guilt,” one of the crucial filings said. “Clemency is a vital part of the death penalty system. It is the only stage in which factors such as remorse, rehabilitation, geographical and racial influences, and other non-correctable legal issues can be taken into account.”
Related:Legislation that lowers the edge for the demise penalty in Florida is ready to be signed into regulation through Governor DeSantis.
Barwick’s lawyers additionally discussed that he has a “neurodevelopmental disorder” that affected his mental construction, and he was once abused as a kid. He participated in a clemency interview in 2021.
“The absence of criteria and the false guidance provided to Mr. Barwick during the clemency process deprived him of the limited due process to which he was entitled,” Barwick’s attorneys wrote. “That deprivation rendered Mr. Barwick’s clemency procedure meaningless and reduced the proceedings to a mark along the road to his execution. It also exemplifies the constitutionally flawed aspect of Florida’s death penalty system. Mr. Barwick’s clemency proceeding equated to nothing more than a coin flip where both sides of the coin showed: ‘denied.’ This standardless process, taken along with the circumstances of Barwick’s case, establish a due process violation that cannot be accepted.”
However, Attorney General Ashley Moody’s place of business argued on Saturday and rejected the due-process arguments claiming that Barwick’s prison background renders his case insufficient as “every federal court hearing his pleas before now agrees that even if due process required the regulations he insists on, he would most likely not receive clemency.” According to Moody’s place of business, this evaluate is in keeping with Barwick’s horrible historical past, escalating from housebreaking and sexual violence at knifepoint in 1983 to housebreaking, tried sexual violence, and stabbing a lady to demise in 1986, not up to 3 months after being launched from prison.
US District Judge Robert Hinkle rejected Barwick’s arguments when refusing to keep the execution final month.
“Mr. Barwick was allowed to write a submission and appear for an interview with the clemency board’s representatives,” Hinkle wrote. “In this proceeding, Mr. Barwick has not claimed that he was denied the opportunity to furnish any information that he wanted to provide. There are no facts supporting the allegation that the clemency board members made their decision based on anything other than merits.”
On April 4th, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a demise warrant for Barwick, with the execution scheduled for six p.m. on Wednesday at Florida State Prison. According to courtroom paperwork, DeSantis denied clemency. Wendt was once came upon wrapped in a duvet and have been stabbed 37 instances.
The Florida Supreme Court rejected a sequence of arguments on Friday, together with that Barwick will have to be excused from execution due to what his attorneys referred to as a “lifelong severe mental illness (neurodevelopmental/neurocognitive disorder) accompanied by immutable cognitive deficits and low mental age.”
If the execution proceeds as deliberate, Barwick, 56, would be the 3rd inmate to be done by the use of deadly injection in not up to 3 months in Florida.
Louis Gaskin was once done on April twelfth for the murders of a pair in Flagler County in 1989, whilst Donald David Dillbeck was once done on February twenty third for murdering a lady in 1990 all the way through a carjacking in a Tallahassee mall parking space.