FL Supreme Court issues indefinite stay for Lambrix
TALLAHASSEE (FOX 13) - The Florida Supreme Court issued an indefinite stay of execution for a man who has been on death row since 1984.
The stay for Cary Michael Lambrix, who had been scheduled to die February 11 by lethal injection, was issued after the Florida Supreme Court heard oral arguments focusing on the impact of a U.S. Supreme Court's decision regarding the state's death penalty-sentencing system.
The high court ruled last month Florida's method for sentencing someone to death - allowing a judge to decide rather a jury - was unconstitutional.
Later, during proceedings for an unrelated case in a Pinellas County courtroom, Judge Michael Andrews rejected prosecutors' plan to seek the death penalty against a defendant, saying "there currently exists no death penalty in the state of Florida" due to the high court's ruling.
Cary Lambrix was convicted of killing two people in February 1983 in Glades County.
Lambrix's first trial ended in mistrial. In 1984, he was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder. The jury recommended the death penalty, but not unanimously.
Lambrix continued to fight the sentence and maintained his innocence, but in 1997 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the sentence and declared it final.