JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A man who has been sentenced to death three separate times over 13 years should not have his sentence overturned, the Florida Supreme Court ruled.
Attorneys for Randall Deviney sought to overturn his sentence based on five claims, including their assertion that the trial court judge should have allowed two death-biased jurors to be stricken for cause, and that Deviney should not have been subject to the death penalty since he was 18 at the time of the crime.
Deviney was convicted of killing 65-year-old Delores Futrell in 2008, slashing her throat with a fillet knife, and then strangling her to death. Futrell had been a caretaker for him as a boy, baking him cookies and paying him for odd jobs around her house.
His original conviction and death sentence in 2010 was overturned because of police misconduct during his interrogation. He was convicted and sentenced to death again in 2015, but because the jury voted 8-4, that sentence was thrown out when Florida law changed to require unanimous death verdicts. He was resentenced to death for the third time in 2017.
Read the full court opinion below: