U.S. Supreme Court Asked to Halt Execution

By Jim Saunders

The News Service of Florida

TALLAHASSEE — Attorneys for Death Row inmate Darryl Barwick have gone to the U.S. Supreme Court in a last-ditch attempt to halt his scheduled Wednesday execution in the 1986 murder of a woman in Bay County.

In documents filed Friday, the attorneys requested a stay of execution and urged justices to consider issues related to Florida’s clemency process. The filings came after a federal district judge and an appeals court refused to block the execution because of the clemency-related issues.

The Florida Supreme Court on Friday rejected other arguments aimed at halting the execution.

Barwick’s attorneys contended in the U.S. Supreme Court filings that Barwick’s due-process rights were violated because of a “standardless” clemency process. They wrote that the state has not granted clemency to any people sentenced to death in 40 years.

“Due process requires that Mr. Barwick be provided a proceeding where the standards are clear and include considerations beyond the condemned’s guilt,” one of the filings said. “Clemency is a critical stage of the death penalty scheme. It is the only stage at which factors like remorse, rehabilitation, racial and geographic influences, and other factors that the legal system does not correct can be considered.”

Barwick’s attorneys also pointed to Barwick having a “neurodevelopmental disorder” that affected his psychological development and that he suffered abuse as a child. He had a clemency interview in 2021.

“The lack of standards and the false guidance provided to Mr. Barwick during the clemency process deprived him of the limited due process to which he was entitled,” Barwick’s attorneys wrote. “That deprivation rendered Mr. Barwick’s clemency process meaningless and reduced the proceedings to a mile marker on the road to his execution. It also illustrates the constitutionally defective nature of a critical aspect of Florida’s death penalty scheme. Mr. Barwick’s clemency proceedings equaled nothing more than a coin-flip where both sides of the coin reflected: ‘denied.’ This standardless process, taken with the circumstances in Barwick’s case, establish a due process violation that cannot be tolerated.”

But in a response filed Saturday, Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office disputed the due-process arguments and also pointed to Barwick’s criminal history. He was sentenced to death for stabbing Rebecca Wendt in her Panama City apartment shortly after being released from prison for raping another woman at knifepoint in 1983, the response said.

“Indeed, Barwick’s case is a uniquely poor vehicle to address clemency-related due process because every federal court to look at his pleadings before now agrees that he would likely not receive clemency even if due process required the standards he seeks to impose,” Moody’s office argued. “That assessment is backed by the horrific, escalating nature of Barwick’s crimes from burglary and sexual battery at knifepoint in 1983 to burglary, attempted sexual battery and murder by stabbing in 1986 less than three months after being released from prison.”

In refusing to stay the execution last month, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle rejected Barwick’s arguments.

“Mr. Barwick was allowed to make a written submission and to appear in person for an interview with representatives of the clemency board,” Hinkle wrote. “In this proceeding, Mr. Barwick has not alleged he was denied the opportunity to present any information he wished to present. He has alleged no facts suggesting the members of the clemency board made their decision based on anything other than the merits.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis on April 4 signed a death warrant for Barwick, with the execution scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday at Florida State Prison. Wendt was found wrapped in a comforter and had been stabbed 37 times, DeSantis, in signing the death warrant, denied clemency, according to court documents.

The Florida Supreme Court on Friday turned down a series of arguments, including that Barwick should be shielded from execution because of what his attorneys described as “lifelong severe mental illness (neurodevelopmental/neurocognitive disorder) accompanied by immutable cognitive deficits and low mental age.”

If the execution is carried out, Barwick, 56, would be the third inmate put to death by lethal injection in less than three months.

Louis Gaskin was executed April 12 in the 1989 murders of a couple in Flagler County. The state on Feb. 23 put to death Donald David Dillbeck, who murdered a woman in 1990 during a carjacking in a Tallahassee mall parking lot.