NASSAU COUNTY, Fla. — The man convicted of and sentenced to death for the murder of Nassau County Sheriff Deputy Joshua Moyers in 2021 is attempting to get his death sentence thrown out.
His attorney made his case before the Florida Supreme Court on Wednesday, and the argument centers around the timing of victim impact statements.
“Our child has been brutally murdered while he protected this community,” said Moyers’ mother, Brenda, while giving her victim impact statement in April 2024.
That emotional testimony from family members of the slain Nassau County Sheriff Deputy was delivered just before the jury deliberated on whether to sentence his killer, Patrick McDowell, to death.
Some jurors were moved to tears.
But now, more than a year later, McDowell’s legal team is arguing that the timing of the victim impact statement biased the jury against their client.
“We’ve poisoned the well essentially for every deliberation in a capital case in Florida,” McDowell’s attorney Robert Pearce III said during Wednesday’s Florida Supreme Court hearing.
In Florida, juries are permitted to hear victim impact statements, but they are instructed that they cannot consider that testimony as evidence when deciding whether to recommend the death penalty.
But McDowell’s attorney argued it’s not possible to negate the impact.
“We can’t present this evidence to the jury and then proceed on the polite fiction that it isn’t actually influencing them because we told them not to consider it,” Pearce said.
The attorney representing the state argued that the US Supreme Court has already upheld the right for states to allow victims to share their testimony with a jury.
“And the purpose of that evidence is to show that the victim is not treated, as in the supreme court’s words, a faceless stranger at the penalty phase of a capital trial,” the state’s attorney, Johnathan Tannen, said.
It was an issue several of the justices highlighted as they questioned McDowell’s attorney.
“If the Supreme Court says it’s okay, I’m struggling to see how there’s a pathway through here for us, even if there happened to be agreement with you,” Justice Charles Canady said.
McDowell’s attorneys are also challenging the constitutionality of a new state law, which no longer requires a unanimous jury to recommend death.
That law was passed after McDowell’s offense, but was applied retroactively, allowing him to receive the death penalty on a 11-1 jury recommendation.
Those arguments were not addressed during Wednesday’s hearing.
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