Florida has no “hard formula set down on paper” to decide who’s next.
By Stephen Hudak
Orlando Sentinel
TAVARES, Fla. — Richard Henyard was born two months after Gary Alvord was condemned to die.
Yet Henyard, 34, scheduled for execution this month for the murders of two Lake County girls, leapt ahead of 198 other Florida killers sentenced to death before him, including Alvord, 61, who has resided on death row longer than any other inmate in the nation.
Why Henyard now?
“I’m not able to answer that question,” said lawyer Mark S. Gruber, who again asked the Florida Supreme Court on Monday to spare Henyard’s life. “There’s no plain or clear explanation. It’s a process shrouded in secrecy and a topic of much speculation in our office.”
Florida has no “hard formula set down on paper” to decide who’s next, said Sterling Ivey, spokesman for Gov. Charlie Crist, who signed Henyard’s death warrant July 9, a week after the state executed Mark Dean Schwab, a child killer who had been on death row 16 years.
But it’s clearly not first-come, first-served in Florida, which has the nation’s second-largest death-row population (388 inmates), behind California (667) and ahead of Texas (361).
Fifty-six Florida inmates have been on the state’s death row a decade or longer than Henyard, who arrived in August 1994.
Florida has executed 65 inmates since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Henyard is to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Sept. 23. The state Department of Corrections did not participate in the choice of Henyard in any way, said Jo Ellyn Rackleff, a DOC spokeswoman.
He was recommended for execution by the governor’s two-man legal team -- General Counsel Jason Gonzalez and Assistant General Counsel Rob Wheeler -- which reviews details of death-row cases, including “how heinous, atrocious and cruel the crime is” and whether the victim was a child or elderly, said Ivey, Crist’s spokesman.
Henyard would seem to be the right pick on both of those issues.
He and 14-year-old co-defendant Alfonza Smalls carjacked Dorothy Lewis and her daughters, Jamilya, 7, and Jasmine, 3, from the parking lot of a Eustis grocery Jan. 30, 1993; raped and shot the mother four times in front of her screaming daughters; and then shot the girls at close range.
An autopsy revealed the 3-year-old’s eyes were wide open when the child was shot in the face.
Dorothy Lewis, who survived the attacks, is now a pastor. She did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment for this article, but she has previously opposed the death penalty for her attackers.
“It won’t bring back my girls,” she told the Orlando Sentinel in July.
Smalls, now 30, was ineligible for the death penalty because of his youth and is serving consecutive life terms in prison.
Other factors also may have figured into the choice of Henyard, including the quality of his defense and status of his appeals.
His trial lawyers, T. Michael Johnson and Mark Nacke, are now judges in the 5th Judicial Circuit, which includes Lake County.
The state Supreme Court has twice reviewed and upheld Henyard’s convictions and death sentence, which was recommended unanimously by the jury.
His appellate lawyers have petitioned federal courts for a case review four times, including the U.S. Supreme Court twice.
In what could be Henyard’s final state appeal, his lawyers argued Monday to Florida Supreme Court justices that he ought to be declared ineligible for the death penalty because of mental and emotional disabilities similar in effect to mental retardation. The court did not immediately issue a ruling.
Like Henyard, Alvord has lost numerous legal appeals of his sentence for raping an 18-year-old Tampa woman and then strangling her, her mother and her grandmother with a nylon cord in 1973.
Though he was found not guilty by reason of insanity of kidnapping and raping a 10-year-old girl in 1970, his convictions and death sentences in the Tampa killings have been upheld. No appeals are pending.
“It’s politics, politics, politics,” said Michael Radelet, a former University of Florida sociology professor who has studied Florida’s death-penalty system. “The decision on who is next to die is a political one and not a criminological one. With 400 people on death row, they can kill pretty much anyone they want to -- so the capricious desires of those in the Governor’s Office are the force behind it.”
Radelet and Richard Dieter, executive director of Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, said Florida’s process lacks transparency, which leads to doubt.
Through his spokesman, the governor denied that politics were a factor in Henyard’s case.
“This individual killed two children in cold blood who had no way to defend themselves,” Ivey said.
Assistant State Attorney Bill Gross, who prosecuted Henyard and was among the first people at the crime scene, said there should be no doubt: Henyard’s crime was outrageous and cruel, and his sentence fair and just.
“It doesn’t matter who’s first and who’s 325th,” Gross said. “If he doesn’t deserve the death penalty, then we should throw it away.”
CONTACT: Stephen Hudak can be reached at shudak@orlandosentinel.com or 352-742-5930.
PHOTO: Richard Henyard
PHOTO: William Thomas Zeigler
PHOTO: Kenneth Quince
PHOTO: William Cruse Jr.
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BOX: Lingering on death row
Among those on death row longer than Richard Henyard:
*William Thomas Zeigler, 63, sentenced to death in 1976 for the Christmas Eve murders of his wife and three others in Winter Garden. Prosecutors contend the killings were part of an insurance-fraud scheme concocted by Zeigler, owner of a furniture store.
*Kenneth Quince, 49, sentenced to death in 1980 after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting and strangling an 82-year-old woman in Daytona Beach.
*William Cruse Jr., 80, sentenced to death in 1989 for a killing spree at two shopping plazas in Brevard County that left six people dead, including two law-enforcement officers. According to records maintained by the Commission on Capital Cases, he claimed to suffer from delusions that people were trying to turn him into a homosexual.
*John Ferguson, 60, sentenced to death in 1978 for his role in a South Florida home invasion in which six people were killed. Two of his co-defendants have been executed. He also was sentenced to death in the murder of a teenage couple. The girl, 17, also had been raped.
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BOX: Central Florida’s death-row inmates
Convicted killer Richard Henyard, scheduled to be executed Sept. 23, has been on Florida’s death row for 14 years. Here’s a look at how many prisoners from Central Florida have been on death row longer than Henyard.
County Number of inmates Number on death row longer than Henyard
Brevard 12 5
Lake 10 5
Orange 25 12
Osceola 1 0
Polk 13 2
Seminole 7 0
Volusia 16 8
Copyright 2008 Sentinel Communications Co.