26 June 2017 :

St. Johns County Judge Howard Maltz vacated the death sentences of James Daniel Turner and Norman Blake McKenzie after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida's old sentencing scheme for death penalty cases. Their convictions stand but each shall be granted a new penalty phase "if the State still desires to seek the death penalty," the orders say. A jury convicted Turner of 1st-degree murder in 2007 for the 2005 stabbing death of Renee Boling Howard after he escaped from a South Carolina prison. Then-Circuit Court Judge Wendy Berger sentenced him to death in 2008 after a 10-2 jury recommendation for the sentence during the penalty phase of his trial. It was those 10-2 juror recommendations that were at the heart of Maltz's orders in response to what are now often referred to as "Hurst motions." The name is a reference to the January 2016 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case Hurst v. Florida that found Florida's sentencing procedures were unconstitutional.