Death sentence upheld for inmate who killed Fla. CO

Enoch Hall was sentenced to die for beating, strangling and stabbing CO Donna Fitzgerald

February 13, 2017 01:25 PM

By Frank Fernandez
The News-Journal

TOMOKA, Fla. — The Florida Supreme Court upheld the death sentence for a convicted rapist who killed a Tomoka prison correctional officer, but one justice dissented saying the decision ran afoul of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Enoch Hall, 47, was sentenced to die for beating, strangling and stabbing corrections officer Donna Fitzgerald at the Tomoka Correctional Institution on June 25, 2008, near Daytona Beach. Hall was serving two consecutive life sentences when he killed Fitzgerald, stabbing her 22 times with a makeshift knife. Fitzgerald was supervising Hall, a welder on a work crew. Her body was found over a cart and partly disrobed, which prosecutors said had shown Hall intended to rape her.

Now-retired Circuit Judge J. David Walsh in 2010 sentenced Hall to die after a jury unanimously recommended death.

But last year in a case known as Hurst v. Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s death sentencing process, ruling it was unconstitutional because it gave too much power to judges and not enough to juries.

In response to the Hurst decision, the state Supreme Court ruled that juries must unanimously find the existence of aggravating factors before a judge can impose death. It also held that the jury’s recommendation for death must be unanimous. Florida had long required only a majority of jurors to recommend death before requiring a 10-2 vote until that was quickly struck down.

The state Supreme Court ruling released Thursday held that because the jury recommendation for death was unanimous in Hall’s case then it was reasonable to believe that the jury unanimously found aggravating circumstances to support the death penalty in his case.

Chief Justice Jorge Labarga, and justices R. Fred Lewis, Barbara Pariente, Charles Canady and Ricky Polston upheld the death sentence. The justices also cited the “egregious facts” surrounding Fitzgerald’s killing further indicated the jury unanimously found aggravating circumstances.

But Justice Peggy Quince dissented writing that his fellow justices were doing what the U.S. Supreme Court cautioned against in the Hurst case

“Even though the jury unanimously recommended the death penalty, whether the jury unanimously found each aggravating factor remains unknown,” Quince wrote.