12 December 2017 :

Emerita Mapp gets life in prison. It was State Attorney Aramis Ayala's First Capital Prosecution. There will be no death penalty in the first capital prosecution authorized under the administration of Orange and Osceola County State Attorney Aramis Ayala. In a case that rekindled the political confrontation between State Attorney Ayala and Governor Rick Scott over the use of the death penalty, Emerita Mapp pleaded no contest on December 8 to one count of murder and a second count of attempted murder in exchange for a sentence of life without parole. The plea deal came just three days before the trial judge was scheduled to rule on Mapp’s motion arguing that the court should bar the death penalty in her case because the state attorney’s office had missed the filing deadline for seeking the death penalty. In March, State Attorney Ayala announced that her office would not seek the death penalty, saying that the use of the punishment was “not in the best interests of this community or in the best interests of justice." Scott responded by removing Ayala’s office from 29 potential death-penalty cases over the course of several months, and replacing her with Lake County State Attorney Brad King. The move, which was opposed by civil rights groups and the Florida black legislative caucus, had unspoken racial undertones: Ayala, a Democrat, is Florida's only black elected state attorney; King, a Republican, is white and a vocal proponent of capital punishment. Ayala sued Scott, alleging that he had overstepped his powers, but in August 2017, the Florida Supreme Court upheld his actions, holding that Scott had acted “well within the bounds of the Governor’s broad authority.” Ayala said she respected the ruling and announced the formation of a panel to decide in which cases to pursue capital punishment. Mapp’s case was the first in which the panel had authorized the death penalty, but that authorization came 22 days after the deadline for providing notice of capital prosecution. That prompted another round of criticisms traded between Scott and Ayala as to who was to blame for missing the deadline. Emerita Mapp, 33, Black, is charged with slitting the throats of two men she robbed on April 11. One man died, Zackery Ganoe, 20. Andrew Bickford survived. She pleaded no contest to first-degree murder with a weapon and attempted first-degree murder with a weapon. Judge Greg Tynan adjudicated her guilty and sentenced her to life in prison.