28 December 2021 :
Paul Durousseau Re-Sentenced to Life in Prison
Florida death-row prisoner Paul Durousseau was re-sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole December 10, 2021, when a second capital sentencing jury reached a non-unanimous sentencing verdict.
Durousseau, now 51, Black, was convicted and sentenced to death in 2007 on charges that he had raped and murdered 24-year-old Tyresa Mack in 1999. The trial court imposed the death penalty in that case after the jury split 10-2 in favor of death. At the time, Florida was 1 of 3 states that permitted judges to impose death sentences based upon non-unanimous jury recommendations for death.
The Florida Supreme Court overturned Durousseau's death sentence (see 31/01/2017) following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the state's sentencing procedures, which reserved for the trial judge the final finding of facts necessary to impose a death sentence, violated capital defendants' rights to a jury trial. Citing the non-unanimous jury sentencing recommendation in that trial — also a 10-2 vote — the Florida court ruled that the constitutional violation in Durousseau's case could not be considered harmless error.
Durousseau was charged with the murders of 5 other Jacksonville women, but never brought to trial in those cases.
