Bottoson, Linroy v. Florida, et al.

BY AMELIA GRUBER, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

At age 74, Catherine Willie Alexander still worked as the postmistress in Eatonville, Fla., and sang alto in her church choir. Her many friends around town knew her as "Mama."

But on Oct. 26, 1979, Alexander left work and never returned. Two passersby saw her leave the post office around noon with a tall African-American man. As she walked out, she leaned over and in a whisper told bystanders to call the police because the man had just robbed the post office. She got into the man's car without any fuss, and the two rode away.

U.S. postal inspectors soon arrived and discovered some money orders were missing. Later that afternoon, Dorothy Bottoson aroused suspicion when she tried to cash one of those orders at her bank.

The inspectors obtained a warrant to search Bottoson's home and on Oct. 29, three days after the robbery, they arrested Bottoson and her husband, Linroy.

The same night, police found Alexander's dead body on the side of a dirt road, riddled with about 14 stab wounds. The medical examiner also found crushing wounds on her chest and stomach that suggested she had been run over by a car.

A subsequent search of the Bottosons' home revealed Alexander's shoes and more of the missing money orders. Inspectors found hair samples and clothing impressions consistent with Alexander on the undercarriage of the Bottosons' brown 1973 Chevelle. Inside the car, police discovered some fibers from Alexander's clothing and the tip of one of her fingernails.

After questioning Dorothy Bottoson extensively, police dropped the charges against her and focused on Linroy. She said he had handed her the money order she deposited the day of the robbery.

In November 1979, a grand jury indicted Linroy Bottoson on one count of first-degree murder. During his trial in Orange County, Fla., Bottoson claimed he was innocent and had received the money orders from a man named Ernest, to whom he lent his car. He alleged that Ernest was responsible for Alexander's slaying.

But trained dogs traced Bottoson's scent to the crime scene. A minister who had visited Bottoson in jail also testified that Bottoson confessed to stealing the money orders, kidnapping Alexander, holding her captive for three days and running her over. Apparently Bottoson also confided in Pertrell Kuniara, a fellow jail inmate. According to Kuniara's testimony, Bottoson said he killed Alexander because she saw the robbery and "dead witnesses are the best witnesses."

On April 6, 1981, the jury found Bottoson guilty of first-degree murder. Four days of sentencing hearings followed, in which state prosecutors brought up the fact that Bottoson had been convicted of robbing a California bank in 1971. Under Florida law, previous convictions are "aggravating factors" that increase the severity of a sentence. In a murder case, this can mean the difference between life in prison and the death penalty.

By a vote of 10 to 2, the jury suggested that the trial judge sentence Bottoson to death, and the judge followed the recommendation. Consequently, Bottoson entered Death Row on May 1, 1981.

For the past 21 years, he has filed a multitude of appeals to the Florida Supreme Court. Each time, the state's highest court upheld his conviction and death sentence. Bottoson also filed a series of requests for hearings in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. The federal court repeatedly denied his requests, and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the denials.

The Florida Supreme Court denied Bottoson's last appeal in January of 2002. Bottoson had argued that his execution would violate the 8th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unjust punishment, because he is mentally retarded.

But the court ruled that Bottoson failed to prove he is mentally retarded based on the results of a three-part test his defense presented at trial. His IQ tests "consistently indicated that he was not mentally retarded" and he did not "have significant deficiencies in adaptive behavior."

Bottoson also claimed his defense counsel was ineffective during the penalty phase of his original trial, but the state's high court found no evidence to substantiate that claim.

With Bottoson's last line of defenses apparently exhausted, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signed a death warrant and scheduled Bottoson's execution for Feb. 5, 2002 at 6 p.m.

Bottoson's lawyers made one last attempt to save him by filing a petition for a writ of certiorari from the U.S. Supreme Court.

This was not the first time Bottoson asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his case. His lawyers submitted petitions to the Court in 1984 and 1996. The Court declined to hear the case on both occasions.

However the landscape has changed since the Supreme Court accepted the case of Ring v. Arizona on Jan. 1, 2002. The case asks whether Arizona's procedure of letting a judge, not a jury, decide if a convicted murderer receives a death sentence is constitutional.

In 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Walton v. Arizona to uphold Arizona's sentencing procedures. But two more recent decisions -- Jones v. U.S. in 1999 and Apprendi v. New Jersey in 2000 -- undercut Walton.

Florida's sentencing procedures are similar to Arizona's, with the distinction that in Florida, a jury recommends a sentence to the judge and the judge makes the final decision. As in Arizona, Florida's judges can consider aggravating factors during sentencing that were not presented or proven beyond a reasonable doubt before a jury.

In Bottoson's case, the judge considered two aggravating factors in determining his sentence: his prior California bank robbery conviction and the argument that he murdered Alexander for the purpose of avoiding a felony arrest.

Bottoson's lawyers have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear Bottoson's case on the grounds that Florida's sentencing procedures are similar to Arizona's and also violate the 6th Amendment. His petition asserts that a ruling on this issue is necessary to clear up confusion created by the Jones and Apprendi decisions ten years after Walton.

The petition details the "tension" between the Walton and Apprendi decisions and asks the Court to "resolve that tension . . . in light of the important constitutional principles announced [in Apprendi]."

Bottoson, 62, had finished his last meal of steamed shrimp, fried oysters, butter pecan ice cream and apple pie, and had only three hours remaining to live when he received a stay of execution from the U.S. Supreme Court on Feb. 5, 2002. The stay will remain in effect until the Court decides whether to accept Bottoson's case.

It was the Court's second reprieve in two weeks for a Florida death row inmate. On Jan. 23, the Court granted a reprieve to Amos Lee King.