Phillip Menditto Fort Lauderdale Criminal Lawyer

Death Penalty Down as Form of Punishment

In October of 2002, Roy Lee McDuffie entered a Dollar General Store and brutally murdered two employees, to get the $7,000 that was kept in the cash register. The man bound and gagged the two women, slashed their throats several times then finally shot in the head. The sister of one of the victims was hoping that the man would get the death penalty for his crime. In 2005, a Florida jury sentenced him to death by lethal injection, but the Florida Supreme Court said that his trial had been unfair, and ordered a re-trial. During his second trial, McDuffie was sentenced to life in prison, instead of the death penalty.

The man was moved from death row, where he was kept in solitary confinement, to the rest of the prison, he sleeps in a dormitory, works for a job or a program during the day and reports back to his cell, where he has a phone to call his loved ones in the evening. Many people believe that he got this lightened sentence, because the number of death penalty sentences are on the decline. To learn more about how you may appeal your own death sentence, contact the Menditto Law Office today!