04 April 2023 :
(March 31, 2023) - Former death row inmate to serve life term for 1982 slaying of Florida woman
J.B. Parker, 60, was sentenced Friday in a court in Stuart. He had been convicted in the April 27, 1982, death of Frances Julia Slater, 18, a convenience store clerk who had been robbed, kidnapped and stabbed, TCPalm.com reported. Parker and 3 accomplices then fatally shot Slater execution-style and dumped her body on a remote road west of Stuart.
All 4 men (Parker, Alphonso Cave, John Earl Bush and Terry W. “Bo Gator” Johnson) were convicted of kidnapping, murder and other charges.
Parker’s life sentence was the only punishment option available once prosecutors met with Slater’s family to announce the state would no longer seek the death penalty, TCPalm.com reported.
“We are where we are not because of fancy defense tactics or defense attorneys, or new evidence or new facts,” Chief Assistant State Attorney Stephen Gosnell told reporters after the sentence was handed down. “That’s not what caused the ultimate predicament that we’re in here, where we had to withdraw the death penalty. It’s happened because of the erosion of the case over 40 years.”
Parker was first sentenced to death in 1983 after an 8-4 jury vote. He won an appeal in 1998 and during a second sentencing phase in 2000, a different jury voted for execution by an 11-1 margin.
His sentence was vacated again after a 2016 order by the Florida Supreme Court that required a unanimous vote, the Naples Daily News reported.
Parker, Cave and Bush were sentenced to death.
Bush, 38, was executed on Oct. 21, 1996, in Florida’s electric chair, according to The Associated Press.
In 1974, Bush had been sentenced to 30 years in prison for rape and robbery. He was released in 1979 and released from parole in December 1981, four months before Slater was killed, the news organization reported.
Cave, 64, has exhausted his appeals and remains on death row at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford.
Johnson was passed out and did not participate in the murder. He was sentenced to life in prison and was released in 2008. He was under community supervision before he was arrested in November in St. Lucie County on drug possession charges.
