01 December 2020 :
Santa Rosa County judge Scott Duncan has sentenced Thomas Fletcher to death for murdering his cellmate at the Blackwater River Correctional Facility in 2018.
Fletcher confessed to the crime and admitted that he murdered Davis in order to be sentenced to death. According to Duncan's sentencing order, in court proceedings Fletcher waived his right to a jury trial, never challenged the death penalty and refused to offer mitigation factors that could have reduced his sentence. The unusual moves were “a position that he has consistently maintained throughout these proceedings,” the judge noted. Fletcher strangled his cellmate, Kenneth Davis, 33, on September 22, 2018, by choking him from behind while inside their prison cell. Fletcher said that Davis told him he was thinking about committing suicide. State attorney Bill Eddins told reporters that Fletcher, who was 24 years into a life sentence, confessed that he committed the crime so he could be sentenced to death. Fletcher pleaded guilty in August 2019, waived his right to a jury sentencing, and asked for the death penalty, which he called his “retirement plan.” At the time of the murder, Fletcher was serving a 1995 life sentence for 1994 Broward County convictions for murder, robbery and cocaine trafficking.
