TALLAHASSEE — A day after a Brevard County circuit judge rejected their arguments, attorneys for condemned killer Bryan F. Jennings on Wednesday asked the Florida Supreme Court to halt his scheduled Nov. 13 execution in the 1979 rape and murder of a 6-year-old girl.
The attorneys filed a notice of appealing Circuit Judge Kelly McKibben’s ruling Tuesday and asked the Supreme Court for a stay of execution.
Jennings also has another appeal pending at the Supreme Court and is fighting the execution in federal court. The motion for a stay and the other cases involve arguments that Jennings did not have legal representation for a three-year period until Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his death warrant Oct. 10.
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The motion argued, in part, that Jennings’ due-process rights have been violated because his new attorneys have not had enough time to review the case and pursue claims that could potentially prevent the execution.
“Appointed counsel cannot adequately represent Mr. Jennings under these circumstances and there is no safety net to ensure Mr. Jennings is meaningfully heard,” the motion said. “Expedience should neither override nor dethrone the rights guaranteed by the state and federal constitutions. A stay of execution should be granted.”
But McKibben has twice rejected similar arguments, including in Tuesday’s ruling. She pointed to a series of past appeals filed by attorneys for Jennings in what is known as a “postconviction” process.
“Contrary to the defendant’s position, he is not entitled to representation in between postconviction proceedings. … Due process requires notice and an opportunity to be heard,” the judge wrote. “As evidenced by the defendant’s lengthy postconviction history, he has been represented at the state and federal levels while actively pursuing postconviction relief. The defendant has had, and continues to have, access to counsel and the courts.”
Jennings, 66, was convicted of murdering Rebecca Kunash on May 11, 1979, in Merritt Island. A 1986 sentencing order included with documents posted on the Supreme Court website said Jennings in the early morning hours went to the window of the child’s bedroom and saw her asleep.
“He forcibly removed the screen, opened the window, and climbed into her bedroom,” the sentencing order by then-Circuit Judge Charles Harris said. “He put his hand over her mouth, took her to his car and proceeded to an area near the Girard Street Canal on Merritt Island.”
The judge wrote that Jennings raped the girl and then slammed her head on the ground, fracturing her skull. He then drowned her.
The notice of appeal filed Wednesday did not detail other arguments that Jennings’ attorneys will make at the Supreme Court. But McKibben’s ruling said arguments have included that Jennings should have received an updated clemency proceeding, after he was denied clemency in 1989.
Jennings is scheduled to be the 16th inmate executed in Florida this year — a modern-era record for a year. The state Tuesday executed Norman Grim in the 1998 murder of a woman in Santa Rosa County.
The previous record for executions in a year was eight in 1984 and 2014. The modern-era represents the period since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, after a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court opinion halted it.
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