By Andrew Pantazi
The Florida Times-Union
RAIFORD, Fla. — The Florida Supreme Court overturned the sentence of a Jacksonville man, one of the youngest inmates on Florida’s Death Row.
The state Supreme Court upheld Terrance Tyrone Phillips’ two murder convictions, but in a 5-2 decision it found that his two death sentences were “disproportionate.” The court considered that he was 18 at the time of the crime, he was borderline intellectually disabled, had a learning disability and had been neglected as a child.
Phillips was convicted of being the hired gun who shot and killed two men -- Mateo Hernandez-Perez, 26, and Renaldo Antunez-Padilla, 30 -- in a robbery plot. He was 18 years and 166 days old at the time of the 2009 Christmas Eve shootings, making him one of the youngest sent to death.
“We do not take lightly the tragic loss of two lives as a result of Phillips’ actions,” the court opinion read. “The state proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Phillips is guilty of first-degree murder; thus, he must be held accountable.”
One of President-elect Donald Trump’s potential Supreme Court picks dissented, finding the death penalty appropriate.
Back in 2009, four men invited a woman to have sex with one of them for money. Instead, she and two other women talked with Phillips about robbing the men, according to court documents. During the robbery, a fight ensued.
Hernandez-Perez was shot in the leg and bled out, and Antunez-Padilla was shot in the chest. Another man was shot in the head, but he did not die.
A mental-health expert testified that because Phillips had an IQ of 76 and people with IQs that low “are typically easily influenced by their peers.” Family members testified he had a speech impediment and often had to repeat himself.
The jury recommended death on an 8-to-4 vote.
Now 25, Phillips will face life in prison instead of execution.
His attorneys tried to argue he shouldn’t have been convicted to begin with, that the shootings were accidental. The Supreme Court disagreed.
“We have been praying, but we were praying that he’d come home,” said Deborah Caul, Phillips’ great-aunt. “He has the mind of a child. He didn’t understand nothing that was going on at 18 years old.” She said she hopes the family can now visit more often.
Justice Charles Canady, who Trump named as a potential pick to the Supreme Court during his campaign, wrote in a dissent that he “would instead conclude that this case -- involving two murders by a defendant on probation -- is among the most aggravated and least mitigated of first-degree murder cases.”
Of the 15 inmates on Death Row who were convicted for crimes committed when they were 18, four of them came from Duval County, more than any other county.
Phillips wasn’t the only Death Row inmate to have his sentence thrown out. Robert McCloud, who was convicted of a 2009 double-murder in Polk County, had his sentence overturned because three co-defendants received lesser sentences and the jury ruled that he wasn’t the shooter. Canady dissented in that case as well.