TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Conviction Of Teen's Killer Stands

ADVERTISEMENT

By TODD LESKANIC

tleskanic@tampatrib.com

Published: November 14, 2008

  Faunce Pearce (2006 photo)

Convicted killer Faunce Pearce may yet escape a death sentence, but a Florida Supreme Court ruling Thursday ensures he won't have a chance at freedom any time soon.

The court's 17-page opinion overturned a 2006 circuit court ruling that granted Pearce a new trial but affirmed the lower court's call for Pearce to be resentenced. That means Pearce's first-degree murder and attempted murder convictions stand in the 1999 shootings of Robert Crawford, 17, and Stephen Tuttle, 16.

The only question left to be decided is whether he will be sentenced to death - as he was in 2002 - or to life in prison for killing Crawford. A jury will convene to hear evidence and recommend a sentence to a judge, who will make the final decision. In Florida, juries make sentencing recommendations in capital cases, and judges give those recommendations "great weight" in deciding whether a convicted person lives or dies.

No date has been set for the new penalty phase.

Tampa attorney Richard Kiley was one of two attorneys who worked on Pearce's appeal as part of his job with the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel's office. Kiley seemed unfazed by the Supreme Court's rejection of his client's plea for a new trial.

"We are very pleased with the decision of the Florida Supreme Court," he said. "It's so difficult to win these things; we'll take anything."

The court's decision is another chapter in the legal battles surrounding the cases of Pearce, 46, and co-defendant Lawrence Joey Smith. The men had separate trials and were convicted and sentenced to death within three years of the 1999 shootings.

Crawford and Tuttle, students at Land O' Lakes High School at the time, were driven to a remote area outside Land O' Lakes on State Road 54, shot and left for dead. Tuttle survived by plugging a bullet wound with a finger and flagging down help. Prosecutors have argued that the boys were shot because they lost $1,200 of Pearce's money in a drug deal.

The cases began to unravel in 2004, when the Florida Supreme Court cited judicial error in ordering a new sentencing for Smith. Two years later, Circuit Judge Lynn Tepper overturned Pearce's conviction and death sentence after finding he had received poor legal representation at trial.

Prosecutors appealed the ruling, leading to Thursday's opinion. In its ruling, the high court dismissed Tepper's finding that Pearce's trial attorneys erred when they failed to object to the admission of certain evidence. The court found that the introduction of the evidence didn't prejudice the jury against Pearce, as Tepper had ruled.

The Supreme Court, however, upheld Tepper's ruling that Pearce should receive a new penalty phase because his attorneys erred when they failed to present adequate mitigation in the sentencing portion of his trial.

Mitigating circumstances are facts about a defendant - family background, mental status, drug use - that a jury can consider in coming to a sentence recommendation. They are arguments presented to keep defendants from death sentences.

Smith, 31, finally received a second penalty phase this year. Tepper opted to sentence Smith to life in prison, although the jury recommended death by a 7-5 vote.

Reporter Todd Leskanic can be reached at (727) 815-1084.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT