After losing at the Florida Supreme Court, attorneys for convicted murderer James Ford this weekend quickly asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt his scheduled execution Thursday.
The attorneys filed documents Saturday seeking a stay of execution and additional legal proceedings as Ford is poised to be put to death by lethal injection in the 1997 murders of a couple at a Charlotte County sod farm.
The Florida Supreme Court on Friday upheld a Charlotte County circuit judge’s decision rejecting arguments that Ford, 64, should be spared execution.
The filings Saturday at the U.S. Supreme Court focused on the contention by Ford’s attorneys that he had the mental and developmental age of a 14-year-old when he murdered Greg and Kimberly Malnory. Ford was 36 at the time of the murders.
The attorneys have tried to draw a connection with a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision, known as Roper v. Simmons, that barred executing defendants who were under age 18 at the time of their crimes. The Supreme Court said such executions would violate the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
In one of the documents filed Saturday, Ford’s attorneys wrote that it “is beyond dispute that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of ‘cruel and unusual punishments’ is not a static command.”
“The class of offenders subject to the death penalty should be narrowed again to preclude the execution of individuals with a mental and developmental age less than age 18,” the document, known as a petition for writ of certiorari, said. “James Ford’s mental and developmental age was less than age 18 at the time of the capital offense he was convicted of, and his execution should therefore be prohibited as cruel and unusual punishment under the federal Eighth Amendment, as applied to the states through the federal Fourteenth Amendment (which ensures due process rights).”
But the Florida Supreme Court, in upholding a decision by Charlotte County Circuit Judge Lisa Porter, on Friday said the argument by Ford’s attorneys was “untimely and meritless.” The Florida Supreme Court opinion said that “even assuming that Ford could not have raised the legal basis of this claim until Roper was issued in 2005, his claim is still nearly two decades too late.”
“Moreover, this (Florida Supreme) Court has repeatedly rejected the argument that Roper’s holding that the execution of an individual who was younger than 18 years at the time of the murder(s) violates the Eighth Amendment should be extended to defendants whose mental or developmental age was less than 18 at the time of their offenses. … And because Ford was 36 at the time of the murders, it is impossible for him to demonstrate that he falls within the ages of exemption, rendering his claim facially insufficient and therefore properly summarily denied,” Friday’s opinion said.
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Jan. 10 issued a death warrant for Ford, who would become the first inmate executed in Florida this year. The execution is scheduled at 6 p.m. Thursday at Florida State Prison.
Ford worked with Greg Malnory at the sod farm and made plans to go fishing on a Sunday with the couple at the farm, which was in a remote area. The next day, April 7, 1997, another employee discovered the couple’s bodies.
Friday’s opinion said Greg Malnory was shot in the head, beaten and had his throat slit, while Kimberly Malnory was raped, beaten and shot. The couple also had a 22-month-old daughter, who was left in a car seat in their pickup truck for more than 18 hours after the murders, the opinion said.
Ford received two death sentences and has unsuccessfully pursued past appeals in state and federal courts.
In one of the documents filed Saturday seeking a stay of execution, Ford’s attorneys argued that an evidentiary hearing should be held in Florida courts on the issue of his mental development. The document said the “opportunity to be heard is a fundamental requirement of due process.”
“Ford respectfully submits that this (U.S. Supreme) Court should grant a stay of execution and relinquish to the lower courts so that he can receive that appropriate due process,” the attorneys wrote. “An evidentiary hearing must be held in order to put forth the full evidence of Ford’s mental impairments, including the fact that recent expert testing indicates that Ford still has a mental and developmental age less than 18 years old.”
