In a 5-1 ruling, the state Supreme Court affirmed a death sentence for a Volusia County man, but it came with a strongly worded dissent from one justice who said the court was doing away with another safeguard against the unfair application of the death penalty.
The Supreme Court affirmed the death sentence for Christian Cruz in a 2013 Deltona kidnapping and murder.
But the key issue in the case was that Cruz’s co-defendant, Justen Charles, who was also convicted of first-degree murder and kidnapping, was sentenced to life. A jury unanimously recommended the death penalty for Cruz.
The Florida Supreme Court in the majority opinion rejected attorney J. Rafael Rodriguez’s arguments that Cruz’s sentence should be reduced to life because his co-defendant was sentenced to life for the same crimes.
In the majority opinion, the Supreme Court ruled that it had in 2020 decided that comparing death penalty cases to other similar cases would violate the Florida Constitution. The justices ruled that given that decision, comparing the relative culpability of defendants in the same case was “rendered obsolete.”
Chief Justice Carlos G. Muniz, Justices Charles T. Canady, John D. Couriel, Jamie R. Grosshans and Renatha Francis concurred in the majority opinion. Justice Meredith Sasso did not participate.
In the dissenting opinion, Justice Jorge Labarga wrote that he strongly dissented in 2020 to the court’s elimination of “comparative proportionality review” which he described as “the most consequential step yet in dismantling the reasonable safeguards contained within Florida’s death penalty jurisprudence.”
Labarga went on to write that he repeated his dissent to eliminating the relative proportionality review. Labarga wrote he fundamentally disagreed that the Florida Constitution prohibited the review and that he viewed proportionality as being consistent with the Eighth Amendment prohibition against arbitrary sentences.
“Surely, in a state that leads the nation with thirty exonerations of individuals from death row, every reasonable safeguard should be retained in this court’s toolkit when reviewing death sentences to ensure that the death penalty is reserved for the most aggravated and least mitigated of murders. I respectfully dissent,” Labarga wrote.
The murder of Christopher Jemery
Cruz, 29, and Charles, 33, teamed up to kidnap and kill 25-year-old Christopher Jemery in Deltona on Aug. 26, 2013. The men were both convicted of first-degree murder and other charges in two separate trials by two separate juries.
A drug dealer had previously lived in the unit at the Belltower Apartments in Deltona occupied by Jemery. The drug dealer was letting Jemery stay there. But Jemery was not dealing or doing drugs. Cruz and Charles targeted the apartment thinking they would find drugs, money or both.
Investigators believe Cruz was the triggerman who shot Jemery in the head with a .22-caliber pistol.
Circuit Judge Raul Zambrano followed the jury recommendation and sentenced Cruz to death during a hearing at the S. James Foxman Justice Center.
The ruling by the state Supreme Court was a step back in death penalty law, Craig J. Trocino, director of the Miami Law Innocence Clinic at the University of Miami, said in a phone interview.
“If the goal of the Eighth Amendment is this narrowing and leaving (the death penalty) open for the worst of the worst, how do you square that with two equally culpable people with completely different sentences?” Trocino said. “It’s not limited to the worst of the worst because one of the worst of the worst got life and the other is getting death.”
Trocino said he and others have been saying for years what Labarga expressed in his dissent: that every safeguard is needed when considering the death penalty in a state that has often gotten it wrong in the past.
Attorney Matt Phillips, who is now in private practice in Volusia County but previously handled death penalty cases for the 7th Circuit Public Defenders Office, said the decision was unwelcome news. Phillips was not involved in the Cruz case but was involved for a time before trial in the Charles case.
“Disappointing, because the (Florida Supreme Court) cannot consider the inherent unfairness that can result from one defendant being sentenced to death while a more culpable defendant could get a life sentence,” Phillips wrote in a text.
Phillips said he had heard of prior cases in which a defendant who pulled the trigger in a murder cut a deal with prosecutors and testified against his co-defendant. The triggerman would get life as part of the deal but the other defendant who refused to deal ended up getting a death sentence.
It was the second time the state Supreme Court had reviewed Cruz’s death sentence. Cruz fared better the first time. That’s when the Supreme Court overturned his death sentence, ruling that the judge had improperly considered testimony from the Charles’ case in sentencing Cruz.
The court sent the case back for resentencing to Zambrano who again sentenced Cruz to death.