Man facing execution puts forth new appeal

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published December 6, 2006

TALLAHASSEE - Lawyers for a death row inmate set for execution next week claimed in an appeal Tuesday that a Florida law is unconstitutional because it bars them from challenging the lethal injection procedure in federal court.

It is the latest appeal Angel Diaz has before the Florida Supreme Court. Another argues he should get a life sentence because that's what another defendant received for the fatal shooting of a Miami topless club manager in 1979. Diaz is scheduled to die a week from today.

The state Supreme Court previously ruled that a state law prohibits lawyers from the state's Capital Collateral Regional Counsel offices from representing death row inmates in civil rights cases, wrote one of his lawyers, Suzanne Myers Keffer. That violates his due process rights, contended Keffer, who works for the Capital Collateral office.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this year in another Florida case that death row inmates can challenge execution methods in federal court but only under a civil rights law.

"Counsel for Mr. Diaz is now statutorily precluded from raising a challenge to the manner of his execution through the only means Mr. Diaz has at this point for presenting such a challenge in federal court," Keffer wrote.

The Florida justices ordered the state to respond today.

The U.S. Supreme Court made its ruling in the case of Clarence Hill, convicted of fatally shooting a Pensacola police officer.

Hill had a private lawyer who then challenged the state's lethal injection method in the federal courts. They refused to hear the challenge, ruling it should have been filed earlier. Hill was executed Sept. 20. Since then two other Florida killers made the same argument. They also lost and were executed.

Keffer contends in another appeal that Diaz is entitled to a life sentence because that's what co-defendant Angel Toro received for second-degree murder in a plea deal.

The Supreme Court previously rejected that argument, but Keffer argues that was before recent new information was obtained - a sworn statement from jailhouse snitch Ralph Gajus.

Gajus recanted his trial testimony that Diaz, who spoke poor English, admitted he was triggerman through hand signs.

Circuit Judge Amy Steel Donner rejected Diaz's argument Friday. The state argues that he cannot make that argument now because the high court previously rejected it.