The Florida Supreme Court has refused to block the execution of death row inmate Donald Dillbeck

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TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the appeals of a death row inmate scheduled to be executed next week for the 1990 killing of a woman during a carjacking in a Tallahassee mall parking lot.

The justices also declined to issue a stay of execution for Donald David Dillbeck, whose death warrant was signed last month by Gov. Ron DeSantis. The execution, scheduled for Feb. 23, is the first time an inmate has been executed in Florida since 2019.

In asking the Supreme Court to block the execution, Dillbeck’s lawyers pointed, in part, to his diagnosis with a condition related to prenatal alcohol exposure.

The lawyers argued that the condition, neurodevelopmental disorder associated with prenatal alcohol exposure, or ND-PAE, is “recognized by the medical community as an intellectual disability-equivalent condition.” The US Supreme Court has ruled that the execution of people with intellectual disabilities violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

Related: Florida execution set for man convicted of escaping custody, killing woman in 1990

Test results “indicated extensive and profound neurological damage throughout Mr. Dillbeck’s brain, with specific abnormalities in the areas of the brain most responsible for regulating planning, mood, judgment, -behavior, impulse control and intentionality,” the lawyers wrote in a Feb. 10 brief in the Florida Supreme Court. “These results show Mr. Dillbeck is developmentally disabled and biologically predisposed to overreact to stress.”

But the justices on Thursday rejected the argument on a series of grounds, including that in 2020 the court denied a motion on the issue because it found Dillbeck and his attorneys “failed to diligently pursue a diagnosis of ND-PAE .”

“In an attempt to circumvent the procedural bar of our 2020 decision and establish due diligence in bringing his exemption claim, Dillbeck argued that his exemption claim was not based on the same evidence from the (2020) trial, but on a ‘sociolegal tipping point’ that ND-PAE is equivalent to intellectual disability is happening now, in 2023,” said the 27-page decision. “Even if our prior decision did not bar him from the procedure, Dillbeck’s claim would still be too late to constitute newly discovered evidence.”

The court unanimously rejected two appeals filed by Dillbeck’s attorneys and the request for a stay. Justice Jorge Labarga did not sign the opinion but supported its outcome.

Dillbeck, now 59, was first sentenced to life in prison for the 1979 shooting death of Lee County sheriff’s Deputy Dwight Lynn Hall when Dillbeck was 15. But in 1990, he walked away from a catering function in Quincy where he and other inmates were working. .

Dillbeck went to Tallahassee, got a knife and tried to carjack a vehicle, according to court documents. Faye Vann, who was sitting in the car, fought back and was fatally stabbed, and Dillbeck was arrested after the car crashed. He was convicted in 1991 of first-degree murder, armed robbery and armed burglary, according to Department of Corrections records.

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If the death sentence is carried out, Dillbeck would be the first inmate in Florida to be executed since Gary Ray Bowles was put to death by lethal injection in August 2019. Bowles was executed for a 1994 murder in Jacksonville.

Opponents of the death penalty called on DeSantis to stop the execution.

In a Feb. 6 letter to the governor, Michael Sheedy, executive director of the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops, said Dillbeck’s “heinous and violent crimes have caused great grief and suffering to loved ones and the community of victims.”

But the letter pointed to “mitigating” circumstances, such as neurological damage caused by Dillbeck’s prenatal alcohol exposure and physical and sexual abuse during Dillbeck’s childhood.

“We also ask that you choose life for Mr. Dillbeck because of the harms caused by the implementation of the death penalty in Florida,” Sheedy wrote. “Its use is a violation of human dignity and an indictment of the low value placed on human life itself in society. We believe that the death penalty should not be accepted because of modern prison systems where society can be kept safe and prisoners can be punished.

By Jim Saunders, News Service of Florida

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