TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – A Seminole County circuit judge has refused to block the scheduled March 20 execution of convicted murderer Edward James, rejecting arguments that he should be spared, in part, because of “cognitive decline.”
Circuit Judge Melanie Chase late Wednesday afternoon issued a 14-page ruling that denied a motion aimed at preventing the execution of James in the 1993 murders of a woman and her 8-year-old granddaughter. The case is now expected to go to the Florida Supreme Court.
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James’ attorney, in the motion filed Sunday, argued that executing him would violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The motion said James had served much of the past three decades in solitary confinement and suffered “physical and mental deterioration” after a near-fatal heart attack in 2023.
But Chase denied the motion on a series of grounds, including saying that James’ cognitive issues had been known long before the heart attack. She wrote that a legal claim about the issue was “untimely.”
“Defendant, himself, alleges in his motion that he has suffered from a cognitive decline and dementing process ‘for years,’ and he summarized the findings of experts regarding that decline from evaluations performed as early as 2018,” the ruling said. “He does not allege, however, why he waited to raise this claim until after the death warrant was signed.”
Chase also wrote that the claim lacks “merit.”
“Based upon all of this evidence, it is clear that defendant’s cognitive decline and mental deterioration has existed for many years,” the judge wrote. “It appears, however, that no attempts were made to obtain the additional imaging recommended by the experts, or to seek postconviction relief based on this cognitive decline until now. To the extent defendant argues that his cognitive decline and brain damage were only recently significantly exacerbated due to his 2023 heart attack, the court still finds that (the claim) lacks merit.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Feb. 18 issued a death warrant for James, who would be the second inmate executed in Florida this year. James Ford was executed Feb. 13 in the 1997 murders of a couple in Charlotte County.
James was convicted of murdering Betty Dick and her granddaughter Toni Neuner. He rented a room from Dick and committed the murders after a night of drinking and drug use.
Court documents said James came to the Seminole County home and strangled the child and sexually assaulted her. He then went to Dick’s bedroom, where he intended to have sex with her. He stabbed her to death, the documents said.
James, now 63, was sentenced to death in 1995 in the murders and also received prison sentences on other charges.
While it raised other issues, the motion filed Sunday by James’ attorney, Dawn Macready, focused heavily on his medical issues.
“At the time of his heart attack, James was already experiencing cognitive decline, which was then exacerbated by prolonged oxygen deprivation from the cardiac event,” the motion said. “James has, for years, suffered from a dementing process that has been assessed by several mental health professionals. He has experienced both short and long-term memory loss, difficulty recalling words and a disorganized thought process. Such deficits are a product of repeated head traumas, extensive prior drug and alcohol use and a recent near-fatal heart attack.”
But the Attorney General’s Office, in filings Monday, argued that evidence of “James’ drug and alcohol use and the consequent impact on brain function was clearly known to him and his counsel as far back as trial” in the 1990s.
“James has been on death row since 1995 and he is presently 63 years old. That he is experiencing mental decline is not necessarily surprising, particularly in light of his long-known substance abuse, coupled with oxygen deprivation that James apparently experienced in 2023, well more than a year before the filing of the … motion,” the state’s attorneys wrote. “Accordingly, it (the motion) is untimely. Moreover, it is unclear why James’ assertion that conditions of confinement were cruel and unusual entitles him to relief at this stage. This claim does not challenge the validity of his convictions or death sentences. It is both meritless and untimely.”